Journal

Meaning in Language: An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics (2011)

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

VERBS AND ADJECTIVES

Chapter 15

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Three distinct areas of grammatical meaning typically associated with verbs:

Tense

Aspect

modality

Tense and modality operate is the proposition, rather than the verb or verb phrase.

GRAMMATICAL MEANING

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Serves primarily to locate the event referred to in the sentence with reference to the time at which the utterance was produced.

Primary (or absolute) tenses: encode event time directly relative to the time of speaking

Secondary (or relative) tenses: encode event time relative to a secondary reference time

Vectorial:

tense systems of most languages

grammatical terms indicate merely the direction along the timeline from speaking time to event time

TENSE

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Past-event occurs before time of speaking

Present-event occurs concurrently with speaking time or includes it

Future- event is projected to occur after the time of speaking

THREE BASIC PRIMARY TENSES

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Grammatically encodes degrees of remoteness as well as direction along the time line

Hodiernal: most frequent metrical system

distinguishes “today” and “not today”

METRICAL SYSTEM

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Normally regarded as a property or characteristic of events and states

Says nothing about when an event occurred (except by implication

Either encodes a particular way of conceptualizing an event

Conveys information about the way the event unrolls through time

A lexical verb may encode aspectual information as part of lexical meaning

ASPECT

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Change: A state of affairs can be construed as changing or as remaining constant.

Homogeneous: if it is construed as unchanging

Heterogeneous: if it is construed as changing

ASPECTUAL FEATURE: CHANGE

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Some events are construed as having one or more inherent boundaries.

A boundary may be at the beginning or the end of an event

The final boundary is generally regarded as the most significant.

Telic: An event with a final boundary

Atelic: a event with no final boundary is described as atelic

ASPECTUAL FEATURE: BOUNDEDNESS

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Duration: the time it takes for an event to unfold

Punctual: an event thought of as instantaneous

Durative: an event that is spread over time

ASPECTUAL FEATURE: DURATION

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Homogeneous-no change is involved

Unbounded-no inherent beginning or end

Durative-persistence through time is of the essence.

May be expressed in English by adjectival expressions, prepositional phrases, or stative verbs

STATES

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Differ in respect of the non-aspectual feature of agentivity

Resemble states in being unbounded and durative but they are heterogeneous

Something is `going on’, but this is not construed as a movement towards an inherent point of completion

ACTIVITIES AND PROCESSES

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Share the feature of durativity and heterogeneity with activities and processes

Distinguished by being telic

inherently completable

The inference of incompleteness is a generalized conversational implicature

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Events in which there is a transition from one state to another

Transition construed as being instantaneous

Heterogeneous, naturally bounded (by the point of transition), and punctual

ACHIEVEMENTS

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Cannot be neatly distinguished from the other aspectual classes in terms of features

Have the same features of heterogeneity, boundedness, and punctuality as achievements.

They do not involve a transition between two states

SEMELFACTIVES

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

One of the most widespread aspectual distinctions

In many languages there is a formal distinction of some sort whose prototypical semantic function is to signal the perfective/imperfective contrast

There is no regular way of indicating the distinction in English

IMPERFECTIVE AND PERFECTIVE

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Iterative: a series of events with a relatively short time interval between them

Habitual: also a repetition, but over a longer period, and with (potentially) longer intervals between occurrences

ITERATIVE/HABITUAL

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Signal a particular attitude or opinion on the part of the speaker to the proposition expressed or the situation described

Can also indicate the degree of desirability (or otherwise) of a proposition becoming true

In English this involves the modal verbs such as- may, might, should, ought, can, and so on

MODAL EXPRESSIONS

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Three main conceptual domains:

Epistemic

concerned with the degree to which a speaker is willing to commit him/herself to the truth of a proposition being expressed

Deontic

covers notions of obligation and permission

Dynamic

is concerned with ability and inability

TYPES OF MODALITY

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Principal function of adjectives

The combination of Adj. + Noun prototypically restricts the domain designated by the noun alone to a subpart, and designates a subset of the entities denoted by the noun alone

There are two main positions for adjectives in English:

Attributive

Predicative

MODIFICATION

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

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Journal

PRAC 6635 Clinical Skills Self-Assessment Form

Desired Clinical Skills for
Students to Achieve

Confident (Can
complete
independently)

Mostly
confident (Can
complete with
supervision)

Beginning (Have
performed with
supervision or
need supervision
to feel
confident)

New (Have
never
performed or
does not apply)

Comprehensive psychiatric
evaluation skills in:

Recognizing clinical signs and
symptoms of psychiatric
illness

Differentiating between
pathophysiological and
psychopathological
conditions

Performing and interpreting a
comprehensive and/or
interval history and physical
examination (including
laboratory and diagnostic
studies)

Performing and interpreting a
mental status examination

Performing and interpreting a
psychosocial assessment and
family psychiatric history

Performing and interpreting a
functional assessment
(activities of daily living,
occupational, social, leisure,
educational).

Diagnostic reasoning skill in:

Demonstrate knowledge of
psychopathology of mental
illnesses through discussion
for different age groups and
mental illnesses

Developing and prioritizing a
differential diagnoses list

Formulating diagnoses
according to DSM 5 based on
assessment data

Differentiating between
normal/abnormal age-related
physiological and

psychological
symptoms/changes

Psychotherapeutic
Treatment Planning:

Provide psychoeducation to
individuals and/or any
caregivers

Promote health and disease
prevention techniques

Self Assessment skill:

Develop SMART goals for
practicum experiences

Evaluating outcomes of
practicum goals and modify
plan as necessary

Documenting and reflecting
on learning experiences

Professional skills:

Maintains professional
boundaries and therapeutic
relationship with clients and
staff

Collaborate with multi-
disciplinary teams to improve
clinical practice in mental
health settings

Identifies ethical and legal
dilemmas with possible
resolutions

Demonstrates non-
judgmental practice approach
and empathy

Practices within scope of
practice

Selecting and implementing
appropriate screening
instrument(s) and
interpreting results:

Demonstrates selecting the
correct screening instrument
appropriate for the clinical
situation

Implements the screening
instrument efficiently and
effectively with the clients

Interprets results for
screening instruments

accurately

Identifies the need to refer to
another specialty provider
when applicable

Accurately documents
recommendations for
psychiatric consultations
when applicable

Summary of strengths:

Some of my strengths are but not limited to Ability to accept and learn
from mistakes. I am open to learning new things and new experience.
I follow instructions and I am honest, and I have creative thinking skills

Opportunities for growth:

I will set my own goals. Accepting feedbacks.
need to grow in confidence can encourage
Time management

Now, write three to four (3–4) possible goals and objectives for this practicum experience. Ensure that

they follow the SMART Strategy, as described in the Learning Resources.

1. Goal:
a. Objective: Following the weekly timetabling meeting I will document my additional tasks so

that I can effectively divide up my time to manage all my duties. This will help me to
improve my time management.

b. Objective: As soon as I leave a patient, I will chart all my notes about our interaction while
they’re still fresh in my mind

c. Objective: By the end of course I want to attend three-day workshops geared towards my
current specialty

2. Goal:

a. Objective: I will work harder so that my chances of getting 80 patients at the end of
this course would be higher.

Objective:
b. Objective:

3. Goal:
a. Objective:
b. Objective:
c. Objective:

4. Goal:
a. Objective:
b. Objective:
c. Objective:

Objective:

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Journal

Assignment: Journal Entry

Critical reflection of your growth and development during your practicum
experience in a clinical setting has the benefit of helping you to identify
opportunities for improvement in your clinical skills, while also recognizing your
strengths and successes.
Use this Journal to reflect on your clinical strengths and opportunities for
improvement, the progress you made, and what insights you will carry forward
into your next practicum

To Prepare
• Refer to the “Advanced Nursing Practice Competencies and Guidelines” found in

the Week 1 Learning Resources, and consider the quality measures or indicators
advanced nursing practice nurses must possess in your specialty of interest.

• Refer to your “Clinical Skills Self-Assessment Form” you submitted in Week 1,
and consider your strengths and opportunities for improvement.

• Refer to your Patient Log in Meditrek, and consider the patient activities you have
experienced in your practicum experience. Reflect on your observations and
experiences.

In 450–500 words, address the following:
Learning From Experiences

• Revisit the goals and objectives from your Practicum Experience Plan. Explain
the degree to which you achieved each during the practicum experience.

• Reflect on the three (3) most challenging patients you encountered during the
practicum experience. What was most challenging about each?

• What did you learn from this experience?
• What resources did you have available?
• What evidence-based practice did you use for the patients?
• What new skills are you learning?
• What would you do differently?
• How are you managing patient flow and volume?

Communicating and Feedback
• Reflect on how you might improve your skills and knowledge and how to

communicate those efforts to your Preceptor.
• Answer the questions: How am I doing? What is missing?
• Reflect on the formal and informal feedback you received from your Preceptor.

;

”

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Journal

A Guide to Write Journals

How to write the journal?

Summarize the main points in the required chapters in a creative way and write your reflection.

You can write the journal as an essay

You can use a mind map to summarize the main points and then write a reflection in a form of a paragraph under the mind map.

Your journal should include:

1. A brief overview (SUMMARY of the important points) of the required chapters.

2. Write your reflection:

The experience that you felt was particularly meaningful for you.

A discussion of what you have personally learned (your weaknesses and your strengths)

discuss your plans for improving your learning experience “of some aspects in the chapters”, how you are going to use the internet “in particular” to fill the gaps in your understanding.

Important Notes

Please avoid copying form the book or slides

It is ok to copy a short definition but you have to put it in between quotation marks “..….”

Writing a summary means avoiding listing unnecessary information. Be brief but at the same time mention the major and most important points.

If you choose to write an ESSAY, please follow the following guidelines:

This is the format

of an essay

Essay structure

Summary of chapter 2

Summary of chapter 3

Summary of chapter 4

Your reflection

Summary of chapter 5

Your essay should be written in around 600 words.

Use Times New Roman font – size 12.

The paper should be double spaced

Pay attention to grammar, spelling.

If you choose to make a mind map, please follow the following guidelines:

Your mind map should be clear and readable (the reader will read it easily)

Use arrows to show links between different parts

You can create a mind map using a mind mapping tool.

Use different colors to differentiate the level of the map, or the categories.

Use different sizes for each level of the mind map to differentiate the levels. This way it will be easier to read.

Do not forget to write a reflection paragraph under the mind map.

Pay attention to grammar, spelling.

Submit it as a Microsoft Word or PDF

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Journal

Meaning in Language: An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics (2011)

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

PREPOSITIONS

Chapter 16

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Words which combine with noun phrases to form phrases with an adverbial function

locative (where)

temporal (when)

manner (how)

In English prepositions precede the noun phrases they govern

In some languages, words with a similar function follow their noun phrases (and may be called postpositions).

In English, prepositions are often homophonous with words with a different function.

PRESPOSITIONS

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Two ways of approaching the semantic description of a linguistic element that displays a range of meanings in different contexts.

Monosemic approach:

Look for a single general meaning underlying all the variants

attribute the variations to local contextual effects

only the underlying general meaning is stored in long-term memory

Polysemic approach:

Accept that multiple senses are individually stored in long-term memory

Different contexts can make different selections

SEMANTIC DESCRIPTION APPROACH

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Must determine whether the different meanings of a word in different contexts are due to the selection of different senses or to contextual modulation of one and the same sense.

PRINCIPLED POLYSEMY MODEL

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Starting from the primary sense of a word: ask whether or not the meaning of the word in a given context can be inferred from the primary sense taken together with features of the context.

If the answer is in the negative: the word in question in the context in question represents a different sense from the primary sense.

DETERMINATION PROCESS

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Not derived by extension from any other sense in the network

All the other senses in the network are derived from it either directly or indirectly.

Has a formal relationship to the other senses in the network

PRIMARY SENSE IN A NETWORK

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Differences in the interpretation of prepositions can occur due to differences of vantage point.

Descriptions assume that each speaker is using him/herself as vantage point in formulating the utterance.

VANTAGE POINT

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Canonical front and back:

inherent orientation of many objects

If an object X has a canonical front and back:

in front of X is ambiguous

can mean either “at or near the canonical front of X” or “situated somewhere on an imaginary line between X and the relevant vantage point”

If an object X does not have a canonical front and back:

the expression in front of X means “situated somewhere on an imaginary line between X and the relevant vantage point”

ORIENTATION

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Basic sense from which all the other senses are directly or indirectly derived

Involves one entity being in a static spatial relation to another, such that the first entity is higher than the second

The terms trajector (henceforward TR) and landmark (henceforward LM) are used to distinguish the two entities

For over, the TR is higher than the LM.

The trajector for a spatial preposition can be defined as the entity whose location is being specified

The landmark is the entity with respect to which the trajector is being located.

OVER

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

The primary sense of in comprises a spatial relationship and a functional feature.

The functional feature is that of CONTAINMENT

It is not necessary for the TR to be completely surrounded by the LM for in to be appropriate

IN (THE PRIMARY SENSE)

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

The spatial relationship involves:

an LM which possesses an exterior

a boundary

an interior where the TR is located

IN (SPATIAL RELATIONSHIP)

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Carry over from the CONTAINMENT functional feature of the primary sense

Development of this sense is motivated by the fact:

there is a tight correlation between being located in a bounded LM and a particular state

conferred by virtue of being so located

IN (THE PRIMARY SENSE)

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

“IN” can be employed with certain states:

conceptualized as constraining the TR

posing difficulty in leaving

EMPLOYMENT OF “IN”

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Denotes a spatial relationship

TR is directed towards a highlighted LM either by virtue of its motion or by virtue of its inherent orientation

When the TR is animate and in motion:

the LM is typically interpreted with the associated function of “goal“

TO (THE PRIMARY SENSE)

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Involves two elements:

a bounded LM

an entry point, an exit point, and a continuous series of points connecting entry point and exit point.

This evokes an associated functional feature of PATH.

THROUGH (THE PRIMARY SENSE)

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Sense Development:

the correlation in experience between motion along a path and purposeful activity, leading eventually to through signaling “purposeful activity” in the absence of “motion along a path”.

THE EXTENDED ACTION SENSE

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

A particular outcome is facilitated by a particular

LMs provide the means whereby the outcome is achieved.

Meaning arises from the close association in experience between paths and means of achieving particular goals.

THE “MEANS” SENSE

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

A large number of temporal uses of prepositions are related to spatial construals of the same lexical form.

Generally accepted on historical and developmental grounds the spatial uses are primary.

Temporal uses of prepositions:

involve construing time as a line on which points can be located

line usually has a direction-future ahead of the TR and the past behind.

passage of time is construed as motion towards the future of the TR relative to the LM

the TR construed as stationary and the LM moving

SPACE AND TIME

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

In some cases:

there is no precise spatial model

there are sufficient points of resemblance to make the derivation intelligible

time is construed as a quantity

there can be more or less

ADDITIONAL CASES OF SPACE AND TIME

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

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Journal

Meaning in Language: An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics (2011)

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

REFERENCE AND DEIXIS

Chapter 19

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Types of reference:

Definite

Indefinite

Generic

THREE TYPES OF REFERENCE

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

The most crucial for the functioning of language.

The intended referential target is necessarily a particular entity

The speaker intends that the referential target should be uniquely identified for the hearer

The act of reference brings an implicit assurance the hearer has enough information to identify the referent

DEFINITE REFERENCE

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Normal input and output conditions hold

The act of reference is embedded in a more inclusive speech act.

The speaker intends that the hearer should recognize his intention to refer by virtue of his having produced the utterance in question.

The part of the utterance the production of which is intended to signal the intention to refer, should have a form which conventionally performs this function.

Identification of the referents of definite referring expressions is necessary so that the hearer can reconstruct the proposition being expressed by the speaker

DEFINITE REFERENCE (CONTINUED)

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

The identity of the referent is not relevant to the message.

Only the class features indicated are presented as relevant.

The use of an indefinite implicates that reference is not knowingly being made to an item defined by the linguistic expression used.

INDEFINITE REFERENCE

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Reference to a class of referents

Two sorts of proposition involving generic reference as argument:

Collective reading- something is predicated of the whole class referred to

Distributed reading- something is predicated of each member of the class

GENERIC REFERENCE

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

The referent that the proposition is about

Often corresponds with the subject of the sentence expressing sing the proposition

Often corresponds with the first element in the sentence

Cannot be characterized without taking context into account

TOPIC

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Usually applied to declarative sentences

It is the part of the sentence which is crucial to the ability of the sentence to convey a piece of information to the hearer

Three main types of focus structure:

predicate focus

argument focus

sentence focus

FOCUS

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

NP with definite determiners

The types of help that speakers give to hearers:

(Note: A given expression may incorporate more than one of these.)

describing

pointing

naming

TYPES OF DEFINITE REFERRING EXPRESSIONS

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

There are two diametrically opposed extreme positions:

Proper names have no meaning whatsoever

this is usually expressed by saying that they have extension, but no intension.

Proper names function as abbreviated descriptions

they stand for the sum of the properties ties that distinguish the bearer from all other referents

they get their meaning by association, not with generic concepts, in the way that common nouns

PROPER NAMES

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Things that can be referred to in the course of a discourse

Are either entities or propositions

Syntax-expressed by categories that function as arguments

NPs, pronouns, certain types of subordinate clause

Expressions which function as predicates do not refer to anything

attribute properties to referents

designate relations between referents.

DISCOURSE REFERENTS

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Does not require familiarity with or knowledge of the referent

Does require that the hearer have a mental representation of the referent which can function as a locus for attaching new information

IDENTIFIABILITY OF REFERENTS

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Clearest signals that a speaker presupposes that a representation is active in the hearer’s mind:

the use of pronouns

unstressed pronunciation

ACTIVE REPRESENTATIONS

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Marking of an inactive representation is:

by means of a pitch accent on the referring phrase

by full lexical coding

INACTIVE REPRESENTATIONS

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Accessible representations: the topic of a sentence must be active or accessible.

Three types of accessibility:

textually accessible

inferentially accessible

situationally accessible

INACTIVE REFERENT STRESSED REFERRING EXPRESSION

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

A referent is textually accessible if:

it has been mentioned in previous talk

is not fully active

is not completely inactive

is easily recovered

TEXTUAL ACCESSIBILITY

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

A referent is inferentially accessible if:

it has not previously been mentioned

its potential current relevance can be inferred from a currently active referent

INFERENTIAL ACCESSIBILITY

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

A referent is situationally accessible if:

it is present in the immediate context of the discourse

has not so far been mentioned

it is not inferable from what has been said

SITUATIONAL ACCESSIBILITY

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Five main types of deixis:

person deixis-involves the speaker, the addressee, and other significant participants in the speech situation

spatial deixis-manifests itself principally in the form of locative adverbs and demonstrative/determiners

temporal deixis-function to locate points or intervals on the time axis using the moment of utterance as a reference point

social deixis-exemplified by certain uses of the so-called TV (tu/vous) pronouns in many languages

discourse deixis-refers to such matters as the use of this to point to future discourse elements, and that to point to past discourse elements

DEIXIS

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

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Journal

Meaning in Language: An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics (2011)

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

SPEECH ACTS

Chapter 18

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Must express propositions with a particular illocutionary force

Speech Acts: particular kinds of action (stating, promising, warning, and so on) we perform when communicating

There are three sorts of things that one is doing in the course of producing an utterance:

locutionary acts

perlocutionary acts

illocutionary acts.

COMMUNICATION

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

The utterance of certain noises

Certain words in a certain construction

Utterance of them with a certain sense and a certain reference

Conflates a number of distinguishable:

produce an utterance inscription

compose a sentence

Contextualize

LOCUTIONARY ACTS

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Acts performed by means of language

Use language as a tool

Defining element- external to the locutionary

Act does not consist in saying certain things in a certain way, but in having a certain effect, which in principle could have been produced in some other way

PERLOCUTIONARY ACTS

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Acts internal to the locutionary act

Once the locutionary act has been performed, if the contextual conditions are appropriate, so has the illocutionary act.

Same illocutionary act can be performed via different locutionary acts

ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Illocutionary force: the illocutionary act aimed at by producing an utterance

there is no communication without illocutionary force

How does a speaker convey, or a hearer understand, the illocutionary force of an utterance?

distinguish between explicit and implicit illocutionary force

There is a specific linguistic signal whose function is to encode illocutionary force

two types: lexical and grammatical

IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT ILLOCUTIONARY FOCE

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Function is to signal specific speech acts

Have certain peculiar properties which set them apart from non-performative performative verbs.

Can generally be recognized by the fact that they can occur normally with “hereby”

Can be used either performatively or descriptively

PERFORMATIVE VERBS

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Most languages have grammatical ways of indicating the illocutionary force of an utterance

Four sentential forms:

Declarative

Interrogative

Imperative

Exclamative

GRAMMATICAL PERFORMATIVITY

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Can exhibit a wide range of illocutionary force

Doubts have been expressed as to whether declarative form encodes any sort of speech act at all

Austin: drew a distinction between performative sentences and constatives

declaratives fell into the latter category.

DECLARATIVES

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Used to ask questions

Express ignorance on some point

Aim at eliciting a response from a hearer which will remove the ignorance

INTERROGATIVE

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

YES/NO: effectively specify a proposition and express ignorance as to its truth

Wh-questions

present an incomplete proposition

aim at eliciting a response which completes the skeleton proposition that results in a true proposition

TWO SORTS OF QUESTION

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Cannot be performed by any performative verbs

expresses a psychological attitude to a fact.

One exclaims by calling something out in a loud voice

The word exclaim does not encode an illocutionary act because is too loaded with manner meaning

EXCLAMATIONS

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Certain types of utterance whose properties seem to suggest that even implicit performatives have a `hidden’ or underlying explicit performative verb.

Every implicit performative has a `deep’ structure

If there is an underlying performative verb with a first person subject and second person indirect object, then the mystery is explained.

PERFORMATIVE HYPOTHESIS

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

No antecedent for the reflexive pronoun

If there is an underlying performative verb with a first person subject and second person indirect object, the mystery is explained.

REFLEXIVES

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Problems occur with adverbs and performative hypothesis

Interpretation of many adverbs requires the presence of verbs not proposed in the Performative Hypothesis

INTERPRETATION OF ADVERBS

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Assertives: commit the speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition

Directives: have the intention of eliciting some sort of action on the part of the hearer

Commissives: commit the speaker to some future action

Expressives: make known the speaker’s psychological attitude to a presupposed state of affairs

Declaratives: bring about a change in reality

CLASSIFYING SPEECH ACTS

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Are usually called happiness conditions or felicity conditions

Some are conditions on any sort of linguistic communication

speaker and hearer understand one another (usually speak the same language)

can hear one another

CONDITIONS FOR SUCCESSFUL PERFORMANCE SPEECH ACTS

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Do not define the speech act

Necessary if they do not hold- the act has not been carried out

Declarative speech acts:

the person performing the act must have authority to do it, and must do it in appropriate circumstances and with appropriate

Command- the speaker must:

be in authority over the hearer

must believe that the desired action has not already been carried out

Must believe that it is possible for the hearer to carry it out.

PREPARATORY CONDITIONS

‹#›

ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Sincerity conditions: the person performing the act must have appropriate beliefs or feelings in performing the act of asserting

Essential conditions: define the act being carried out

SINCERITY AND ESSENTIAL CONDITIONS

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

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Journal

1. A brief overview of the chapters along with the notes you took during the classes covering the chapters. Write, a detailed description of some aspects of the chapters and the experience that you felt was particularly meaningful for you. 3. A discussion of what you have personally learned, –your weaknesses and your strengths. Also, discuss your plans for improving your learning experience “of some aspects in the chapters”, how you are going to use the internet “in particular” to fill the gaps in your understanding.

Don’t plagiarize
Write a summary “or concept map” + reflection using your own words

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Journal

Name, p 1/1, 25 April 2022

Example: Reflective Journal

NAME

PS450: Reflective Journal

Week of XX:

The first chapter brought up for me the famous saying, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” by George Santayana. In other words, history will keep repeating itself until we learn from it and apply that lesson to change. Nothing can change if a lesson is not learned.

Then, how when anything is occurring in the present there is always a history behind it to be understood how it got to that point in the present. When studying psychology, we are interested in trying to understand human behavior and the psyche behind it, so an individual’s past is essential to it. I believe that humans are innately good and pure, it is their upbringings and experiences in their past that turns them to act out and develop and intent to harm out into the world. This is also played out on a collective level as we are looking at in psychology’s history.

Understanding history and how it correlates with what is happening in the present makes for critical thinking skills to be at play, like I am doing this moment writing this, thinking critically.

I feel as though Descartes dualistic perspective on how the mind and body were separate does both an injustice. Even though he believed they had a direct influence on one another, I believe they are more as one. One cannot exist without the other, so it is more than just an influence on one another. The mind is not just limited to humans, all living things have a mind, it is consciousness that is different.

Week of XX:

Müller’s doctrine of the specific energies of nerves really makes me think. We experience the world not through our sight, rather how our nervous system, our internal world, is interacting with the external world. This makes me think a lot about how I have panic attacks and so my nervous system is perceiving a threat and so my biological response is fight or flight mode, hence the physical symptoms of fast heart rate, lightheadedness, etc. But why is my nervous system perceiving a threat. There must be some kind trigger that my nerve fibers are sensing, I wonder what that is? Hmmm I will have to think more into this.

Thinking about the Nervous System Structure this week reminded me of how going to see a chiropractor for spinal realigning has helped stop my panic attacks significantly. Because my spine was out of alignment, my nervous system synapses were on overdrive trying to overcompensate for the height difference I had between my right and left side of my body. Once she realigned my pelvis and there was no longer a height difference, I felt so much relief in my nervous system, like I simply felt more relaxed. I experienced first-hand understanding how the nervous system works hand in hand with the spine. Sherrington’s work on discovering the synapses was very significant in the history of psychology because it led to an understanding of the nervous system, which is so important because it is what we are perceiving the world through.

Week of XX:

Reflecting on the psyche assignment, I really enjoyed it. Looking into where the term psyche comes from and the Greek mythology behind it. It really resonated with my outlook on our existence as humans. Being “spiritually awakened” I believe there is truth in all religions, it is all talking about the same thing, in completely different, distinct ways to its culture. So being able to look at human beliefs from a unified perspective I completely understand the origin of psyche, representing human consciousness’ constant battle of the soul, truth and love, and the ego, greed, and betrayal. Despite psyche giving into her ego and betraying her true love, their true love conquered all.

If you look at life from your ego, it leads to lack, greed, etc. But from the soul, a oneness perspective, you stop seeking outside of yourself, which is the key to happiness. As humans we have a choice which way our consciousness perceives from, ego, or the soul. Ego existing only as the brain does, but the soul existing beyond death. It is our true essence.

I feel as though the threshold concept was looking into the human psyche, or consciousness, to see at what point do we perceive a difference in our environment through a psychological reaction.

Week of XX:

Thinking about Darwin’s theory of evolution, I think it is interesting how he held it back for as long as possible out of fear of how it would be received by the scientific community, as it challenged a biblical understanding of human origin and development. It is interesting to think that even back then scientists hold back their research findings out of fear of being scrutinized for out of the box ideas. It makes me wonder if many scientists throughout history have not published their findings to society to keep the peace and status quo. Often even when you present truth, if it goes against the collective belief system, you will be personally attacked and can even lose your job and credibility over it, which is sad. I wonder if Charles Darwin would not have ever came forward with his work if it wasn’t for Wallace’s similar ideas at the time and his letter. If Darwin was alone in his evolutionary ideas, would he have ever felt secure enough in it to share?

Was ADHD a survival adaptation? So many people today have a diagnosis of ADHD or characteristics of it, I bet it is so common now because it allowed humans to more successfully multi-task and therefore better equipped for survival. I have an ADHD diagnosis and I can attest to the fact that I operate on a high-pace, highly effective manner, compared to those I know who do not have ADHD. I feel as though I accomplish things a lot more quickly and efficiently than others, making me think it is an adaption to help for better success and survival.

Week of XX:

I really resonate with William James. He stood in his beliefs, even when It challenged the status quo. I am also very interested in consciousness and feel as though it is where our spiritual nature lies. I saw a quote one time that said something like “By keeping science and spirituality separate from one another does both an injustice”. I believe that the day that science embraces the supernatural and metaphysical, is the day we advance further than ever as human species. Despite critiscm, James argued that spiritualists and mediums should be investigated with an open mind. Human psyche does not believe in what it cannot understand and that is its downfall. I believe James was on to something with his ideas, if only the scientific community investigated spirituality and mediums in search of truth, even if it is uncomfortable. But once again, the fear of how the public reacts keep them away from researching that topic in terms of science.

If I go on to get a PhD in psychology, I will research those taboo topics that James mentioned. I will do research that merges both science and the metaphysical, even if it makes others uncomfortable. I want to do meaningful research, not mediocre research that does not help humanity develop, which I believe this kind of research would.

Week of XX:

What stood out to me from the reading is how at the 1906 APA presidential address James Angell, said that “Structuralists were more likely to ask, “what is consciousness?”, while functionalists were more concerned with asking “what is consciousness for?””I feel both are equally important questions to understand consciousness as a whole. I feel as though functionalism was given a lot more focus, while structuralism was not given the necessary focus it should have been given as well. I feel psychologists should look more into what exactly consciousness is.

I feel as though even today we lack an understanding of what consciousness is and is not. It is something that should be given more importance to. It may help us take big strides in understanding of who we are as humans and what we are doing here. It may help make more sense of our internal worlds, as well as how it directly influences our external worlds.

I am not surprised that functionalism was the one more focused on as it was more logical and straightforward, as structuralism could be more spiritual, and we know how science feels about that touchy subject.

Week of XX:

Binet’ individual approach to psychology was so successful and helped the development of psychology because once a collective mind studied, became individual minds. It gave way for helping individuals develop in areas where they are weak. It gave hope to people that they can change and become strong in what they were once weak in. I think that was a turning point in the field of psychology.

It gave way for each person to start learning about themselves and their strengths and weaknesses. Being linked to a collective mind does not help anyone better themselves. Individual psychology is what we use today in therapy and clinical settings to treat individuals. Depending on a person’s history, how their mind works is going to vary accordingly so being aware of that is so essential in success treatment for mental illness. In my clinical psychology class, when we learn about different psychotherapy techniques, the one best to use always depends on the individual’s history and characteristics. It was cool to relate this topic to another class and even my job at the psychiatric inpatient hospital.

I also recognized that the mental testing movement gave way for the DSM criteria in diagnosing individuals with mental disorders, and neuropsychological evaluations. Once psychology took an individual approach, it gave way for the average person to achieve more as they are now their own, distinct mind, rather than a collective mind.

Week of XX:

Wertheimer’s Productive Thinking stood out to me this week. He argued that thinking was inhibited by the way the educational system was based on rote learning and rule memorization. I do believe in general, the average person does not think critically, rather off programming beliefs, with a close mind to other alternative truths. I think the way the educational system is constructed is behind this lack of productive thinking.

Lewin’s research also stood out to me. I believe his research looking into different types of leaderships and how it is most and least effective was significant. I resonate with how he believed that his research should contribute to the improvement of society, because that is how I feel about the research I will do in my career if I do go ahead to get a PhD in the field. I want to study our multi-dimensional nature as spiritual beings having a human experience, I want to prove it to help society understand on a deep level what we are doing here on Earth. I believe that will help improve all the greed, hate, and materialism at play in our present society. I will be a humanitarianism activist. I have a lot of respect for Lewin and seek to have a meaningful impact of humanity with my research as well. It was inspiring to read about him.

Week of XX:

The study of behaviorism in psychology is my favorite. I think it is because the behaviorism psychotherapy technique is the most powerful to me. I learned about it in my clinical psychology class and have also applied it to my personal struggle with panic attacks. With panic attacks we are conditioned to associate certain situations with the attack and therefore avoid those situations, but that is maladaptive because it impairs everyday living.

With behaviorism, a behavior can be habituated to the situation. Going back to my example, in that situation, when the panic arises, not escaping, sitting with it as peak panic arises, and after a couple minutes pass the body automatically starts to relax since it realizes it is not being threatened as it feared, and now the behavior is habituated to that situation. Behaviorism is very powerful because it asks you to slowly face what you fear, could be re-facing trauma, but it has the most profound results because the situation or trauma now does not have all the power over you.

It was interesting to learn about the history of behaviorism and how it came to be as I am very in awe of the therapy technique. Emotional responses hold the most weight, and Watson studied this.

Week of XX:

I really enjoyed learning about the evolution of behaviorism and how it developed to what we know today. I was specifically very intrigued by Skinner’s ideas and contributions to it. He really helped academia understand that behavior is shaped by experience/ consequence. We can all appreciate how Skinner’s work sought to improve society as a whole with the use of behavioral techniques, clearly an important contribution to the field, and the betterment of society.

I found it interesting that not all behaviors were equally conditionable, how the animal’s instinctive behaviors could limit the power of the conditioning. In trying to conceptualize this I thought of this. How someone who grew up poor and with a lack of resources mindset, may not be conditioned in terms of reward with money in the same way as someone who grew up middleclass, not always focusing on lack. The person who grew up poor has an instinct of there not being enough, and therefore that will play a part in limiting the power of conditioning. That is why how we are raised and programmed is so critical because it becomes instinctive, and that is hard to change, being shown in Skinner’s discovery.

Week of XX:

This chapter was the most interesting to me. Understanding how the mentally ill were once treated helps us not repeat the past of that. I work in a psychiatric inpatient hospital, or what was once called, an asylum. It is mind blowing to me the way humans have treated other humans when they act in a way that they do not understand. It is sad but thank God for Dorothea Dix and others who helped reform asylums and the treatment of the mentally ill.

I find Freud fascinating. Specifically, his work into the unconscious, or subconscious mind. I believe that is where the key to a person’s healing lies. I got hypnotherapy done a month ago and it was so powerful. I wanted to see what trauma memories from my childhood were suppressed in my subconscious in order to bring them to my conscious awareness so I could get to the root of my anxiety, and by exposing it and processing the emotions properly, I could set myself free of it. It worked. I accessed memories I did not know were there. During the hypnosis session the therapist was guiding me using the technique that Freud developed, free association. It is so interesting to relate that experience of getting into my unconscious mind to when it was developed.

Slips of the tongue, or Freudian slips, hold so much meaning to me. I believe nothing is a coincidence as there is always an unconscious reason, as Freud says. I never knew that the ideas that I have about life and my spiritual beliefs tie into his discoveries. That is mind-blowing.

Week of XX:

It is interesting to learn that behaviorism therapy really took off after world war ll, with the help of Joseph Wolpe’s development of systematic desensitization. I can see how the world needed that kind of powerful therapy after the trauma of world war ll.

I really resonate with a humanistic approach to treatment as well. I believe I use this type of approach in how I interact with the patients at the psychiatric hospital I work at. I give them an unconditionally positive interaction, despite how they may have acted out earlier in the day or toward other staff. The patients really respond extremely positive to me because of it, compared to my co-workers, who do not use this approach. The chapter says that in doing this, “being a model of the self-actualized person…” I never realized I was even doing this, but I do consider myself a self-actualized person, maybe not all the way yet but I am well on my way there and by being so strong in myself, I send that out to others and lead by example. I did not know Carl Rogers developed this type of technique that I use but think it’s so powerful to relate it to how I interact with the patients.

I also enjoyed the topic of self-actualization, as it is something I have been aware of and am trying to reach. I am dedicated to self-mastery and self-actualization is a part of that. Humans do have the power to create the life they seek, even with a traumatic past. It is once the individual no longer wants to be a victim to their circumstances, rather a warrior and take their life in their hands. Everyone can reach the point of no longer being tied to their past but getting to that point of breaking the cycle is the hardest part. I see it every day at the psychiatric hospital.

Week of XX:

In seeing the shift in history from behavior therapy to cognitive therapy, it made me think of CBT, Cognitive Behavioral therapy, which I am writing a research paper on for my clinical psychology class. It is a highly effective therapy technique that starts by using cognitive techniques, and then incorporates the behavior component as well. Once the two techniques were combined, strides were made in treatment. Both behavior and cognitive therapy are efficient on their own, but together even more so.

Stanley Milgrim’s obedience study has always been a powerful point in psychology’s history. I learned about it in my applied social psychology course. It reminds me of how we are programmed to seek guidance from authority figures ever since a very young age while in school. We are programmed to not think for ourselves, rather what we are told by those in authority positions is our truth, therefore situational pressures do overcome individual personality.

This also reminded me of the diffusion of responsibility idea. If someone is on the ground yelling for help in a busy store, individuals feel less responsible to help as there is many other people around to help and so they do not, and when all those people around have that same idea, no one is helping the person. While if someone is on the ground yelling for help in an empty store and it is only you and that person, you will help. Humans are very influenced by other humans, especially in a group setting.

journal

Name:

Date:

Method Comparison Journal Exercise

Read the two research articles cited below and fill in what you notice about their characteristics, similarities or differences in the table below.

Qualitative Study:

Blixen, C., Perzynski, A. T., Bukah, A., Howland, M., & Sajatovic, M. (2016). Patients’ perceptions of barriers to self-managing bipolar disorder: A qualitative study. International Journal of Social Psychology, 62(7), 635-644

Quantitative Study:

Boyers, G. B., & Rowe, L. S. (2018). Social support and relationship satisfaction in bipolar disorder. Journal of Family Psychology, 32(4), 538-543.

Characteristic	Qualitative	Quantitative
Research design
Sample size
Sampling method
Procedure
Measures and instruments
Data analysis technique
Results
Readability of report
Ethical considerations
Any other thoughts?

Journal

Contemporary Issues:
Historical Framework of Contemporary Psychology

Unit 7

Structuralism & Functionalism

Structuralism
E.B. Titchener’s Psychology

Brought Wundt’s Psych to America

E. B. Titchener (1867-1927)

English, educated at Oxford

1892 PhD from Wundt at Leipzig

1892 Cornell

The Postulates of a Structural Psychology (1898)

Analogy to biology

Structuralism is to functionalism as anatomy is to physiology

Hence, understanding structure precedes understanding function

Structuralism

Structural Psychology:

describe the components of consciousness in terms of basic elements

describe the combinations of basic elements

explain the connections of the elements of consciousness to the nervous system

Consciousness: “immediate experience”

Probed by introspection

Structures of the Mind (only these 2)

Sensation

Thought

Structuralism (continued)

Analysis of immediate conscious experience

Systematic experimental introspection

Required extensive training  an “introspective habit”

Designed to reduce bias (in principle)

Elements of human conscious experience

Sensations  basic elements of perception

attributes  quality, intensity, duration, clearness

Images  basic elements of ideas

attributes  quality, intensity, duration, but less clearness

Affective states  basic elements of emotions

Only 2 qualities  pleasant, unpleasant

Experimental Psychology at Cornell

Structuralism did not gain much popularity OUTSIDE of Cornell

Caught between Behaviorist and Gestalt Psychology

Ended with Titchner

Note: E.G. Boring (Hx of Exp Psych) was Tichner’s Student

“Titchener’s Manuals” transcended theory dispute

textbooks for experimental psychology “drill courses”

student and instructor’s manuals (teachers were often new to the methods and concepts of experimental psychology)

1901  Qualitative Experiments

Experiencing and introspecting to various sensory, perceptual, and affective experiences

1905  Quantitative Experiments

Psychophysics, Reaction Time

Titchener’s Experimentalists

APA too “eclectic” for Titchener

Not sufficiently “experimental”

Dropped membership 1899

Informal annual spring meetings (promote Exper. Psych

Old Boys Club – No women

“…women could not tolerate such masculine activities as smoking …”

But  Christine Ladd-Franklin (1914)

“Have your smokers separated if you like (tho I for one always smoke when I am in fashionable society), but a scientific meeting is a public affair, and it is not open to you to leave out a class of fellow workers without extreme discourtesy”

Christine Ladd-Franklin

Early exposure to suffragettes via Mother.

Vassar College (Math, 1869) – taught 2nd school

1878, entered JHU on fellowship – when JHU realized she was a woman, tried to revoke but math prof (Sylvester) covered her – though didn’t get title.

1882, completed PhD (1st woman) – JHU would not grant degree till 44 years later. Married JHU mathematics professor, Fabian Franklin.

1891-92 Germany (w/ husband’s sabbatical)

Worked with Müller and von Helmholtz.

Color Vision; evolution

Tried for JHU position (married women typically not hired)

finally in 1904, taught 1 course at JHU (unpaid, renewed annually-common for women)

Worked with Müller & Helmholtz

Theory of Color Vision

evolution

Evaluating Structuralism

Study of “generalized adult mind”

Only adults could be trained to introspect properly

could not include children, the insane, or animals

Interesting topics, but not “psychology”

Hence, structuralism became isolated

Problems with introspection

Fundamentally subjective and biased

Debate: Wundt vs Oswald Külpe (PhD & assistant)

EBT said all thought involved an image; Imageless thought could be broken down to basic sensory images (support Wundt)

Imageless thought: objective significance not associated with specific words, symbols or signs.

Titchener’s lasting contribution

Vigorous advocate for basic laboratory research

Functionalism

how consciousness helps environmental adapt

vs Wundt & Titchner – structure of consciousness

Psychology – science of mental content, not of structure

1900 Joseph Jastrow APA Pres

Consistent with Darwinian thinking and American pragmatism

James: mind and consciousness would not exist if it did not serve some practical, adaptive purpose. It has evolved because it presented advantages

purpose of human consciousness is to enable mankind to consider its past, adjust to the present, and plan the future

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903): Social Darwinism

Issue: reconcile the objective, scientific nature of psychology with its focus on consciousness, which by its nature is not directly observable

The Chicago Functionalists
(& some at Columbia)

John Dewey (1859-1952)

PhD from Hall @ JHU in 1884; U Michigan (–94)

1894 joined the new U Chicago (1894–1904)

After Chicago went to Columbia (1905-1930)

A Founder of N.S.S.R. (1919) – community ed

Emphasize social influence on mind & behavior

The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology (1896)

Opposed analysis into components

Better seen as an integrated, coordinated whole that serves to adapt the individual to the environment

stimulus, sensation, & response exist but not as separate, juxtaposed events.

Rather: coordination -> stim enriched by the results of previous experiences & response is modulated by sensorial experience.

Dewey’s importance for history of education

Progressive education model

Relevant curriculum; Learning by Doing; Participatory Democracy

James R. Angell (1869-1949)

Masters with Dewey @Michigan; MS Psych @ Harvard

German doctoral studies, but never finished final edits

1894-1911: Psychology Program at Chicago

Mind/Body single functioning unit

Note: supervised John Watson

APA Presidential address 1905

Structuralism: what is mind?

Functionalism: what is mind for?

Rejected Titchener’s analogy to biology

The Province of Functional Psychology 1907

1921 Presidency of Yale

Harvey Carr (1873-1954)

Important maze learning research Under Watson

1925 Psychology: A Study of Mental Activity

Popular text of functionalist ideas

The Columbia Functionalists

James McKeen Cattell (1860-1944)

PhD with Wundt (1886)

Studied with Galton

statistics & quantification of research

individual differences

eugenics movement

1890  article on “mental tests” (coins the term)

Wissler study: mental tests of Columbia students

RT, sensory, etc

Clark Wissler:

Tests not corr with academic success or each other

Cattell abandoned testing

Editorial work (e.g., Science, Psychological Review)

founded the Psychological Corporation after leaving Columbia 1917 (political/anti war)

Edward Thorndike (1874-1949)

Started with James

Comparative Psychology

Maze learning

Cattell brought to Columbia (Ph.D. 1898)

Switched to cats and dogs in “puzzled boxes.”

Trial and error learning (“trial and accidental success”)

Ruled out reasoning and imitation

Controversy with Mills over the issue of whether animal behavior should be studied in the lab or in a “natural” environment

“Law of Effect”

the immediate consequence of a mental connection can work back upon it to strengthen it.

Robert S. Woodworth (1869-1962)

Like many, attracted by James’s Principles

PhD with Cattell at Columbia in 1899

Transfer of Training work with Thorndike

Questioned value of “formal discipline” education

James & others: brain can be exercised SO disciplines like Latin taught for discipline NOT content

Amount of transfer proportional to task similarity

Note: no control group

Emphasis on organism motivation

S-O-R to replace S-R

Psychometrics ( Greek: mental & measurement)

“Columbia Bible” – Experimental Psychology 1938

Produced modern definition of experiment

Manipulate independent variable

Hold all else constant

Measure dependent variable

Exper. research different from correlational research

Causality issue

Journal

Contemporary Issues:
Historical Framework of Contemporary Psychology

Psychology in the

21st Century

Researchers & Practitioners

Before World War II

Researchers / academicians controlled APA

Those interested in the practice of psychology formed the American Association for Applied Psychology in 1937

After World War II

APA reorganized; division structure formed

APA gradually shifted toward interests of practitioners

Researchers felt increasingly marginalized

Psychonomic Society formed in late 1950s

APS, the Association for Psychological Science (originally, American Psychological Society) formed in 1988

Diversity in Psychology

Women in psychology’s history

Pioneers

Mary Calkins, Margaret Washburn, Christine Ladd-Franklin, Leta Hollingworth, Lillian Gilbreth, Bluma Zeigarnik, Eleanor Gibson, Mary Cover Jones, Dorothea Dix, Anna Freud

Today, women outnumber men as psychology majors, as graduate students, and as new PhDs

Non-Dominant Cultures in psych’s history

Difficulties for Jews in 1930s

Limited job market, perceived as “clannish”

Even more limited opportunities for African-Americans

Pioneers: Francis Sumner, Kenneth Clark, Mamie Clark

Cf: socio-economic class

Trends in Contemporary Psychology

Increased interest in brain and behavior

Neuroscience & its subdivisions

Return of evolutionary thinking

Evolutionary psychology

Impact of computers on research and statistics

e.g., multivariate analysis; modeling

Increased emphasis on professionalization of practitioners

e.g., the prescription privilege issue

Increased specialization among psychologists

Cognitive SCIENCES

Return of Consciousness

Embodied & Extended Cognition

The Future: Psychology or Psychologies

Not clear if psychology has ever been a unified discipline

e.g. era of the schools  structuralism vs. functionalism vs. behaviorism vs. gestalt

Increased specialization

Sigmund Koch (Boston U)

“Psychology” or “The Psychological Studies”? (1993)

If there is a unifying force

It is psychology’s history

Journal

Contemporary Issues:
Historical Framework of Contemporary Psychology

Unit 8

Applying the New Psychology

Desire for Application of Psych

E. W. Scripture: Thinking, Feeling, Doing (1895)

Focus: Exp Psych for General Public

PhD w/ Wundt (1891); later medicine (1906)

Hall brought to Clark (1 yr), then Yale (Exp. Psych Lab)

Co-founded APA with Hall (1892)

Fired from Yale (1903) due to argument re: nature of psych

Columbia Med Sch (1915-1919): Speech & Language

Rest of life in UK & Vienna

Basic laboratory findings had real-world relevance

e.g., RT to help fencers

e.g., Combo psychoanalytic with exercise approaches to the correction of speech problems (most work was in speech) i.e., stuttering of emotional origin

Application of Psychology

Context

American Pragmatism

Pierce, Dewey, and James (late 19th & early 20th centuries); meaning of any idea is a function of its practical outcome.

Personal: Low pay for professors; needed additional income streams

Convincing U admin of the need for laboratory budgets

More experimental psychologists being produced than laboratory positions available

The Mental Testing Movement

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)

Memory; learning curve; forgetting; perception

Nonsense Syllables; Forgetting Curve

1st Standard Research Report: introduction, methods, results, discussion section

Completion test: abilities of children via sentence completion

More academic relevance than two-point thresholds

Alfred Binet (1857-1911)

Charcot (hypnotism); developmental; educational & social psych

Individual psychology

1904: French Gov: create a test to ID students needing alt. education

The Binet-Simon scales (1905, 1908, 1911) (Simon was B’s student)

“Normal” standardized by 10 children from each of 5 age groups

Mental levels

Débile  scoring at two mental levels below normal

Stressed test limitations

Intelligence malleable

Mental “orthopedics”

Mental Testing In America

Henry H. Goddard (1866-1957)

PhD from Clark (with G. S. Hall) in 1899

Vineland Training School for Feeble-Minded Girls and Boys (NJ)

Secures Binet scales (1908)

translates, first use in U.S.

Diagnostic scheme

Idiot  mental age 1-2

Imbecile  mental age 3-7

Moron  mental age 8-12

Term invented by Goddard

Goddard  cause was heredity

Vineland as ideal for those labeled morons

Isolate from society

Prevent breeding

Eugenics (very popular in Amer)

The Kallikak Family

Goddard’s Research Was 2 Tiered

Binet-Simon Measuring Scale

Observe & question feeble-minded children at home to learn what they could (300 families)

Discovered two general lines descended from Martin K.

2 women (Quaker wife; affair w/”feeble-minded” barmaid)

“bad” side  high percentage of feeblemindedness

“good” side  virtually no feeblemindedness

Goddard  feeblemindedness therefore inherited

Methodological problems

Effect of preconceived biases on data interpretation

The Kallikak Family

Q: What other things might be involved?

– Poor mistress & opportunities, nutrition, medical care, etc.

Mental Testing & Immigration

Concern over change in immigration patterns

Before 1892 – more from western and northern Europe

After1892 – more from southern and eastern Europe

1913 Goddard @ Ellis Island to detect morons in the immigrant population

Intelligence Classification of Immigrants of Different Nationalities (1917)

Most Ellis Island immigrants were mentally feeble-minded (many sent back)

80% of Hungarians – 83% of Jew

79% of Italians – 87% of Russians

The Immigration Restriction Act, passed in 1924 (till 1965)

Late 1920s, Goddard reversed opinions,

question the validity of the tests

morons could be educated

Feeble-minded should be allowed children

Lewis M. Terman (1877-1956)

Ph.D. Clark 1905; Stanford 1910 – 1942

Created & standardized Stanford-Binet test (1916)

Institutionalized IQ concept (from Stern in Germany)

[Mental age / Chronological age] x 100

Implied unitary concept of intelligence

Believed intelligence, measured by IQ, was inherited

Helped create group test for Army & schools

Longitudinal study of giftedness (1921) IQ=135+

1st long, large group study (n=1500)

Meritocracy

Study outlived Terman

Low attrition rates

White, middle class overrepresented

Outcome  Questioned traditional concept of gifted student as bright but socially inept and prone to burnout

Leta Hollingworth (1886-1939)

Columbia

Masters: got job giving Binet Test; PhD in 1916 (with Thorndike)

Researched sex differences

Variability Hypothesis

Hyp: males had more variability than females

Females in middle of IQ

Males more in higher & lower ends

Looked at 1,000 patients  no variance differences

Suggest societal expectations

Mental Incapacity During Menstruation (Dissertation)

Hyp: females incapacitated during menstruation

studied perform q3 days x 3 mo  no evidence for effect

Pioneer in gifted education (Best known for this)

Gifted Children: Their Nature and Nurture (1925)

First textbook in gifted education

Favored enrichment rather than grade acceleration

Robert M. Yerkes (1876-1956)

Harvard Ph.D. 1902 – comparative psychology

cognitive diff between primates & humans is qualitative

Primates had less cultural influences so better to study

Yerkes Primate Center (Atlanta) named for him

Proposed and organized Army testing program (1917-19)

Army Alpha (verbal test): for literate soldiers

e.g., commands, analogies, disarranged sentences

Basis of the SATs

Army Beta (non-verbal test): for illiterate soldiers

e.g., picture completion, digit-symbol

1.7 million soldiers tested

minimal effect on war, but testing big business in postwar era

Controversial report:

Average mental age of 13

Darker people less intell; fairer more intell (e.g., B 10.4; Ital 11)

Nation in trouble? Or bad tests?

Terman: “There is nothing about an individual as important as his IQ”

Lippmann (New Republic) 1922 – Criticized Studies

conditions of IQ testing, bias, social problems.

Applying Psychology to Business

Walter Dill Scott (1869-1955)

Ph.D. with Wundt; Prof @ NW

Psychology applied to advertising

The Theory and Practice of Advertising 1903

Urged appeals to emotion (humans not very rational)

Hugo Münsterberg (1863-1916)

Ph.D. with Wundt; also MD; Prof @ Freiburg

1892 – James brought to U.S. to run Harvard lab

Soon developed interests in applied psychology

Forensic psychology

On the Witness Stand (1908)

Therapy (psychophysical parallelism)

Psychotherapy (1909)

I/O Psych

Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (1913)

Münsterberg’s “Economic Psychology”

“Our aim is to sketch the outlines of a new science, which is to intermediate between the modern laboratory psychology and the problem of economics.”

Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (1913)

find the best possible man

to produce the best possible work

to secure the best possible effects.

Employee selection

“selection of those personalities which by their mental qualities are especially fit for a particular kind of economic work”

Simulation strategy (Boston Elevated Railway)

Procedure created that captured essence of the task

Better drivers outscored poor drivers

Job analysis strategy (Telephone operators)

Job analyzed into specific cognitive skills

Tests developed for each (e.g., memory, attention)

Other Leading Industrial Psychologists

Walter Van Dyke Bingham (1880-1952)

Carnegie Institute Division of Applied Psychology (Pitts, PA)

Address problems of Pitt. companies

e.g., Bureau of Salesmanship Research

e.g,. Research Bureau for Retail Training

Lillian Moller Gilbreth (1878-1972)

Time and motion studies with husband (uneducated businessman)

Pioneer in ergonomics

Mother of 12 (movie: Cheaper by the Dozen about her)

Harry Hollingworth (1880-1956) – Married to Leta Hollingworth

Prototype of psychologist trained as experimentalist but forced by circumstances to be an applied psychologist (needed $)

Coca-Cola study

Lawsuit: Pure food & drug act: effects of caffeine

Found no sig, effect

The Psychology of Functional Neurosis (1920)-PTSD

One of 1st books on Clinical Psych

Applied Psychology in Europe
Psychotechnics

WWI: many killed; infrastructure destroyed

Russian revolution

Wartime application in WWI became peacetime applications in the 1920s

Münsterberg a pioneer, as was Stern (coined the term)

Prior work on physio on fatigue, etc

Main activity was employee selection

U.S. – greater use of paper-and-pencil tests

Europe – greater use of simulations with elaborate apparatus

Validation problems

journal

Week One: 9/9-9/15
This post from September
13th is a generally good
post. The photo is people
based and shows the
non-profit’s work in action.
It features their app and
the phones being used.
The text in the post uses
hashtags and tags another
group the D-Tree is
working with. It also offers
some numbers to show
the scope of the work
D-Tree is doing.

This tweet from September 10th is
great for connectability. It links to
their blog, utilizes hashtags, as well
as tagging another group that they
are working with. They are also
specific about where the work is
happening. While it’s not the most
interesting tweet it is very
informative.

This post from Amref on 9/10 uses a
popular hashtag in its post. This
helps connect them to younger
audiences. Their post also features a
person-centric, interesting photo that
adds to the information in the
description. They are also very clear
about what they are doing to help.

Week Two: 9/16-9/22

This post is from 9/18. I think it does a good job of showcasing the work that the non-profit is
doing. This offers very concrete evidence of how the non-profit is completing their mission. They
also connect a link to their blog in the description. However, this post is not very visually
appealing. They could have chosen a more cinematic or dynamic way to showcase they app
such as photographing or taking video of the app being used in real life rather than an
illustration on a plain white background. They also didn’t include any hashtags or reply to the
comment they received, even after six days.

This post is very similar to the Instagram post. It showcases the new app and links to their latest
blog post. This one has slightly more in-depth information about the app in addition to the
pictures of it. It doesn’t use any hashtags.

This post brings up
relevant concerns
for PATH and
highlights the work
they are doing to
deal with these
issues. However,
despite the
presence of an
important person
(Robert Redfield)
he and his
organization are
not tagged. There
are also no
hashtags. In
addition, the post
mentions the
methods PATH is
using but does not
expand on that in
any way.

Week Three: 9/23-9/29

This post has a great
focus on the
volunteers. It shows
that D-Tree is taking
into account the people
it’s serving when it
creates its products.
However, the photo
quality is low. The post
also doesn’t share
much of a story. It
doesn’t let us know
who these people are
(beyond that they are
CHVs) or how they
ended up here, simply
that they are working
on the design on the
new app. The post
does use hashtags, but
I think it could have
included some more
effective ones as well.
Maybe about where
they are.

Once again this similar post from D-Tree’s Instagram is very people focused. However, the
framing of the photograph is pretty awful. The water bottles and clutter distract from the people
and there’s a large amount of empty space that isn’t be filled or utilized and makes the photo
boring. For Instagram, the picture is the most important part of the post. It should draw the
viewer in and tell a story, and this photo does not do that. D-Tree also did not take the time to
reply to the comment on the post. While this comment is not exactly an individual’s comment
about D-Tree, the lack of reply still makes it look like they don’t really care.

This post from Amref is for World Heart Day. It is visually appealing and utilizes graphic design
and photography to draw in the viewer. It also uses a popular hashtag and event to promote
AMREF’s message.

Week Four: 9/30-10/6

This tweet is very informative
but doesn’t really draw people
in or invite much interaction.
There’s nothing eye-catching
about the photo or the title to
the article. It does utilize
hashtags and tags other
organizations that are involved
with this topic, which is good.

This post doesn’t have any people in
and also features the logo of PATH
instead of D-Tree. It isn’t very
interesting to the average viewer but
does show some professionalism for
D-Tree and links them with other
similar organizations. A more
interesting and dynamic picture could
have been more beneficial.

This post from Amref is very effective in that it uses a
person-centric photo of the people that are being helped and
which helps tell their story. It tells the important facts of what
the organization is doing and where and uses a relevant and
popular hashtag that will help get their post seen by a wider
audience.

Week Five: 10/7-10/13

In this tweet, D-Tree does a good of
summarizing the important facts
about their article to draw their reader
in. It clearly states what they are
doing to make a change. However,
the tweet could be more focused Bi
Jokha and telling her story to create a
more emotional appeal and get the
audience interested.

This tweet from later in the
week features the same article.
It does start with a more
storytelling driven approach by
including a quote, but the same
article didn’t need to be posted
twice on the same platform. I
think the second example of the
post was a little more effective
in drawing the audience in as it
is more personal. Therefore it
was able to gain more
engagement then the first post
did.

This post from Living Goods offers a bright, person-centric photo. It links another organization
that is involved with their work and gives some quick information to draw you into reading the
full article. However, it doesn’t utilize any hashtags. Considering the article starts with some info
about World Contraception Day, #worldcontraceptionday probably would have been good to use
at the very least.

Week Six: 10/14-10/20

These pictures are person focused but are not of the best quality. The top picture is taken from
a little bit far away. The bottom pictures focus up close on a detail which is interesting. The post
does not really have a call to action or offer any way for the audience to engage with it very
much. It does use hashtags and showcase the work D-Tree is doing and how they take advice
from their constituents.

This post on Twitter is generally the same as the Facebook post from this day. I think the post
worked better on Facebook, but once again they use hashtags and showcase their work well. In
this post, it’s even more evident that the pictures were taken from too far away.

This post starts with a question to engage the audience and draw the person in. It has a link to a
video, which is a little too long but is still interesting and engaging. However, the post once
again doesn’t use any hashtags or tag anyone to increase the reach of the post.

Week Seven: 10/21-10/27

The picture featured with the post is great in terms of
having people or being person-centric, being framed
close up, and featuring great vibrant colors. They
utilized hashtags but the caption doesn’t tell much of
a story. We know what they are doing but it’s unclear
who exactly we are looking at in this photo.

D-tree shared this post from
Little Sun that talks about how they have made a difference in Tanzania with mobile technology.
The photo is very interesting and good quality. It focuses on people and shows the technology
that is being used. It tags D-tree and D-tree reposting it increases their connectivity and
visibility.

This post from Living Goods has a colorful and interesting graphic. It gives the most important
info at the very beginning of the post but doesn’t explain what the organization’s exact role in the
conference is. It has a hashtag but doesn’t tag any of the other organizations at the conference.

Week Eight: 10/28-11/3

This post
starts with a quote which is a great way to draw people in and start telling a story. The picture is
a little contrasty and blurry but it is well-framed in that the people take up the whole frame.
However, they look kind of sad.

This post is pretty boring. The
picture doesn’t show the speakers face and is rather dark. The caption doesn’t do much
storytelling or tell us who exactly is speaking and why. Instead, it offers us a bunch of technical
information.

This tweet was part of an ongoing live tweet session that VillageReach did of a speaker for their
organization at an event. They posted a very interesting quote from the speech and tagged both
the speaker and the event as well as utilizing a hashtag. Overall, as part of a live tweeting
session, I think this a great tweet.

Week Nine: 11/4-11/10

D-tree reposted another organization’s post about a panel that they were speaking on. They
used the hashtag for the organization and connected with the other organization. The original
post included an explanation of the panel but the graphic included is pretty boring.

The picture from this post is too far away and low quality. It’s hard to see the faces of anyone
involved. The caption doesn’t tell us much about who is there and just uses a lot of formal titles
and technical language. They use lots of hashtags, but don’t tag anyone who was involved.

This post from LivingGoods has a great picture. It’s people focused, uses all the space in the
frame, and also has the LivingGoods logo in with the community health worker. The caption
uses hashtags and tells the story of the people in the photo in the hope of getting people to
open the blog post and read the full story.

Week Ten: 11/11-11/17

This post is okay. It’s not longwinded and doesn’t offer as much technical talk like a lot of
D-Tree’s other posts. It uses hashtags for an event but doesn’t tag anyone in the photo or at the
event. They also didn’t respond to the comment on the post. The picture is good, it’s colorful and
filled with people.

D-tree retweeted this tweet about Rachel on the THS panel. It’s great that they are interacting
with those who mention them as it increases their visibility and reach. The photos are from a
little far away, but obviously, they couldn’t do much to control that.

This post from VillageReach has a great photo. It’s person-centric and shows joy. They also use
graphics to increase the interest and fill up the negative space in the photo. They have a
concise caption that captures their mission and a clear call to action for the viewer (visit the
global experience map). However, they don’t utilize hashtags.

Week Eleven: 11/18-11/24

This post has an up-close an interesting photo that is detail-focused. It tags another relevant
organization and uses hashtags. The caption is short and gets straight to the point. It kind of has
a call to action with #EndTB.

The photo here is great. It shows all the people up close and taking up the whole frame. The
caption has a good amount of hashtags and D-Tree tagged other organizations involved.
However, it’s god more technical information then storytelling.

Week Twelve: 11/25-12/1

These photos are great. They are person-centric and taken from close up. They show people
working and training. They tag the organization they are working with and have hashtags. The
caption is short and tells the story of what they are doing immediately.

This post looks a bit like a screenshot of a website rather than a graphic that was made from
Instagram. I’m not sure the photo gives much to the graphic. The caption is pretty long and has
a lot of technical explanation. It mentions partnerships with other organizations but doesn’t
name them. It does have a really strong call to action (visit communityhealthtookkit.org).

This post is from VillageReach’s Giving Tuesday. They say exactly what a donation will do,
incentivise larger donations by having the board of directors offer to match donations over $100,
and have a strong call to action. They use several relevant hashtags and have a strong
high-quality picture that is relevant to the content of the caption and utilizes graphic design
elements.

Journal

Contemporary Issues:
Historical Framework of Contemporary Psychology

Unit 10

Origins of Behaviorism

Behaviorism’s Antecedents

Philosophical antecedents

British Empiricism: John Locke – tabula rasa

British Associationism

Comte’s positivism (a form of empiricism)

We can’t know the essence of a thing, but only its relations to other facts

“Positive” knowledge

Observable, measurable

theology and metaphysics are imperfect modes of knowledge

Controlling nature

Concern over methodology

Introspection in particular

Comparative psychology

Required non-introspective measures

Ivan Pavlov 1849-1936

In training for ministry;

but decided on science after reading Darwin and Sechenov (physio)

1883  degree in medicine

1891  director of Institute of Experimental Medicine (St. Petersburg)

Research on digestion/gastric secretion

Research on salivary reflex leads to conditioning work

‘psychic salivation’

a reflex – not a permanent but a temporary or conditioned one – was involved.

Nobel Prize for physiology  1904

Conditioned Reflex

Now possible to study all psychic activity objectively

instead of subjective approach

Study relation between an organism and its external environment

The Experimental Psychology and Psychopathology of Animals (1903)

CR, etc. defined

CR is elementary psychological phenomenon

Pavlov’s Influence

honorary degrees from Cambridge & many others

Russia became center of Physio Research

1915 Order of the Legion of Honor (France)

Pavlov and Soviets

1921, Lenin: “the outstanding scientific services of Academician I.P.Pavlov, which are of enormous significance to the working class of the whole world.”

Conditioning work consistent with Soviet mission

All equal

Condition people to share Communist ideals

Hence, Pavlov’s work favored and well funded

Pavlov initially critical of government

But accommodated in face of Nazi threat in 1930s

Pavlov and the Americans

Pavlov introduced by Yerkes and Morgulis (1909)

Greatest impact in the 1920s (lectures translated into English)

A Cautionary Tale of Hx from 2nd Sources

Goodwin, C.J. (1991) Misportraying Pavlov’s apparatus. The American Journal of Psychology.104(1), 135-141.

Usual sketch (left/A), actually equipment developed by Nicolai but usually attributed to Pavlov

Actual apparatus (right/B) in the early years of the lab

Stems from misreading of Yerkes and Morgulis (1909)

Problem  textbook writers relying too heavily on secondary sources

The Founding of Behaviorism
John B. Watson (1878-1958)

Trained at functionalist University of Chicago (1903)

comparative psychology & studying animals

Influenced by Jacques Loeb’s work on tropisms (in plants)

phenomena of life explained re: physical & chemical laws

PhD 1903  correlated brain development and improved learning ability in rats

1903-1908  on the faculty at Chicago

Maze studies with Carr

Surgically eliminated senses one at a time to determine which were necessary for learning (e.g., vision, smell, not needed)

Key sense  kinesthetic

Shorten a maze alley  rat hits the wall

Lengthen an alley  rat tries to turn too soon

Watson and Carr Study

Maze

(shaded area could be removed)

Antivivisectionist reaction

Watson at JHU 1908-1920

Continued animal studies

Both lab (conditioning) and field (bird studies)

1913: Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It

“Behaviorist Manifesto”

1st @ Columbia, then in Psychological Review, 20, 158-177

“Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science.”

Introspection and consciousness  OUT

Thinking is just subvocal speech

Study of overt behavior  IN

Goal  given S, predict R; given R, predict S

Promise of applications

1915  APA presidential address

Demonstrated effects of conditioning procedures

Emotional Behavior: Little Albert

Watson & Morgan (1917) basic emotions or ‘drives’

Fear  results from loud noise or loss of support

Rage  results from restraint

Love  results from stroking skin

Watson & Rayner (1920) (Little Albert experiment)

a healthy, stolid 9-month-old baby, was shown a live rat, a rabbit, a dog, and a monkey. He showed no fear.

Paired loud noise with rat to produce fear of rat

Fear generalized (e.g., rabbit)

Fear persisted (for a month)

Ethical and methodological problems

Mary Cover Jones: eliminated fear (behavior Tx)

Little Peter’s fear of a white rabbit – presenting food along with rabbit (1924)

Watson After Johns Hopkins

1920: Watson a superstar

Affair with Rayner, his 21yo grad student

Wife divorces him

big news, she’s from prominent family

JHU fires him; cant find another academic job

J. Walter Thompson: advertising firm in NYC

Applying science to a new life in

Marketing research

Advertising campaigns based on emotions

Popularizing behaviorism

Behaviorism (1924)

“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select…”

Psychological Care of Infant and Child (1928)

Rational rather than emotional parenting strategy

Journal

Contemporary Issues:
Historical Framework of Contemporary Psychology

Unit 9

Gestalt Psychology

Psychology So Far

Germany: Structuralism: Wundt, Titchner (US)

USA: Functionalism/Behaviorism

Protest against data of consciousness as part of Psych

Similar to Galileo removing mind from matter (physics)

Gestalt: another, different protest in Germany:

Against analysis of experience into elements

Today we would say against reductive materialism

Against exclusion of value/meaning

‘The Whole Is Other Than The Sum Of Its Parts’

Gestalten Properties

The whole is other than the sum of its parts

Kurt Koffka

Mind experience wholes whose significance transcends its parts.

not simply more but unique entities

Wholes had a unique, independent existence

Properties of whole are (emergent)

don’t exist in individual parts

e.g., H2O  Water with unique, observable properties

e.g., Melody: unitary whole; not simply string of notes

a significant, meaningful structure

Knowledge of Wholes comes from observing wholes

NOT inferred from parts & association

The Origins & Early Development

Philosophy

Kant’s a priori perceptual and cognitive categories

Space & Time are inherent structure of our minds

Husserl’s phenomenology

essential structures that allow the objects naively taken for granted in the “natural attitude” to “constitute themselves” in consciousness

structures of consciousness & phenomena that appear in consciousness

Christian von Ehrenfels

Gestaltqualitat: form qualities (over & above elements)

e.g., melodies

Wholes are the givens of experience

vs. Association: simple, arbitrary connections

Association ignore intrinsic relations, meaning, value

Whole has functional, lawful relations among parts (System)

Change any part –> principled change in whole

Max Wertheimer attended Ehrenfels’ lectures @ Charles U (Prague) while studying Law

The Gestalt Program

Stop Reducing Experience To Sensation

Wundt: sensation is Quality & Intensity in Space-Time

BUT S&T not observed

i.e., a sensation at a diff place = diff sensation

Mach” Space & Time are directly observable

so: sensations have Intensity, Extent & Duration

Franz Brentano (1838-1917) – Act Psychology

Intentionality: science of mental phenomena

study thinking not thoughts

Carl Stumpf (1848-1936)

Student of Brentano (as was Freud)

Perception: Music, acoustics, vision

Clever Hans debunking

Stumpf’s students: Wolfgang Köhler & Kurt Koffka (Gestalt Psych founders)

Apparent Motion

Phi (DEMO): http://mesosyn.com/mental8-14.html

Apparent motion resists analysis (into smaller things)

you can see it, recognize it, distinguish it – but cannot analyze it into sensations

Whole is other than the sum of its parts (Koffka)

IT IS A PHENOMENA

NOT a sensation or set of sensations

EMERGENT: pertains to whole psychophysical situation

Meaningful – not inferred; immediate Psych givens

Eliminated eye movements as an explanation and argued against unconscious inference (too slow)

Gestalt Psychology

Not Just ‘Perception”

– A PROGRAM OF SCI-PSYCH –

read TOC from “Documents”

FOUNDERS

WERTHEIMER – the theoretician

KOFFKA – the writer (most fluent in English)

KOHLER – the spokesman

MAX WERTHEIMER (1880-1943)

Law @ Charles U

–> Berlin for Psych (Under Stumpf)

> Ph.D. from Univ of Würzburg 1904

Learned: introspection & imageless thought

Then Prague, Berlin, and Vienna,

1910:Traveling on vacation, had insight on “seen motion”; got off train in Frankfurt & bought toy stroboscope – worked out Phi motion

Went to Univ & exp. psych lab; started experiments with Kohler & Koffka soon arrived

1916-1929: at Berlin Psychological Institute

With Köhler & Lewin (Koffka was now at Gissen)

KURT KOFFKA (1886-1941)

PhD also w/ Stumph on Rhythm (1910) then Frankfurt (met Kohler & Wertheimer)

Spent year in Edinburgh – Fluent in English

1912-1924: U. Giessen (40m away); Cornell 1924-5;U Wisconsin–Madison 1927-8

Extended Gestalt to Development

Behavioral Fields (see Kohler)

fields that included outer world & objects

basis of Lewins later work on life space

Introduced Gestalt to U.S.

Article on Gestalt Psych & Perception (1922)

WOLFGANG KOHLER (1887-1967)

PhD w/ Stumph in Psych-Acoustics (1909)

Physics w/ Max Planck

Mentality of Apes: Ape Station @ Teneriffe (Spain) 1913-1920 (WWI) – more below

Relations emerge in Gestalten

Perception of Relations <–> Intelligence

Insight <–> quick learning

1920: back to Berlin Lab

Field Systems in Brain

applied physics to bio –>

1922 replaced Stumph as top man at Berlin:

Director of Berlin Psychological Institute (1922-1935)

“Golden Age” until Nazis came to power

APA president – 1959

Exodus

All 3 left Germany for USA in 1930s to escape Nazi

1st Koffka to Smith

not Jewish but objected to Nazi

2nd Wertheimer to U in Exile (later NSSR)

Last Kohler (fled) to Harvard then Swarthmore

others went to Cornell, Kansas, Yale

Others Areas: Sonar, Music, Development, Velocity, Movement

Gestalt Organizing Principles

Figure-ground

Border “belongs” to figure

Ground “extends” behind figure

Figure memorable and substantial

Figure-ground reversals

One or the other, not both

Gestalt organizing principles (continued)

Grouping by proximity

Grouping by similarity

Good continuation

Pragnanz  “good figure”

closure

Behavioral vs. Geographical Environment

Lake of Constance story

(Task of Gestalt Psychology p27)

Man rides across a frozen lake, thinking it’s a snow-covered plain

Inn keeper tell him he just rode across the lake

drops dead

Q: In What Environ Did Behavior Take Place?

Geographical environment

was actually a snow-covered frozen lake

Not the whole truth

Behavioral environment

No different than if it were solid ground

Key: we share Geo Environ but have unique Behav. Environ – Kurt Lewin’s Theories

Köhler’s Mentality of Apes (1917)
Gestalt Approach to Cognition & Learning

Sultan

Banana hung out of reach on cage top

two-stick problem

combine two sticks

1 stick to reach longer stick

Stacking Crates

Insight

Reorganizing elements of problem situation

Requires being able to view the entire field

Köhler re: Thorndike

Cats couldn’t see the whole field and all the elements of the solution to the problem

Thorndike’s re: Köhler

evidence of trial and error learning

Other Gestalt Research On Cognition

Von Restorff effect (Hedwig von Restorff 1906-1962)

With Kohler in Berlin

Better memory for stimuli that stand apart from the rest

Cat Dog Rabbit Frog Mouse

Karl Duncker (1903-1940)

With Kohler in Berlin & again at Swarthmore

Functional fixedness: one element of situation already has a (fixed) function

which has to be changed for the

correct perception

Candle problem

Kurt Lewin (1890-1947)
Expanding the Gestalt Vision

Modern Social Psych

Group Dynamics; Action Research

PhD from Stumpf (1914)

The War Landscape (1917) – Fought in WWI

Behavioral vs. Geographical environments again

Beginning his field theory

Berlin Psychological Institute (1921-1933)

With Wertheimer and Köhler; Nazi threat (1933)

Cornell (1933-1935), then Iowa (1935-1944), then MIT (1944-1947)

At MIT  Research Center for Group Dynamics

Lewin and Field Theory

Nature vs Nuture: Interactionist

Lewin and field theory

B = f (P,E)

Interaction of Person & Environmental factors

Present moment, not past emphasis

Topology

Life space

Vectors & valences

Equilibrium a goal

Conflict

Approach-Approach

Avoidance-Avoidance

Approach-Avoidance

The Zeigarnik effect: tendency to experience intrusive thoughts about an objective that was once pursued and left incomplete

Lewin and Social Psychology

Action Research (1944)

research leading to social action … uses “a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action and fact-finding about the result of the action”

Currently used in community development

The Leadership Studies (1943)

Democratic

originality, group-minded & friendly

Autocratic & Laissez-faire

aggression, hostility, scapegoating & discontent

Difference not result of individual differences; individuals respond to the structure

Kurt Lewin (1890-1947)
Expanding the Gestalt Vision (cont)

Lewin and developmental psychology

Differentiation process

Barker, Dembo, & Lewin study (1941)

Frustration and regression

Dedifferentiation

Lewin and social psychology

The leadership studies (e.g., 1943)

Democratic > [Authoritarian = Laissez-faire]

Disturbing effects of switching from D to A or A to D

Action research

e.g., on reducing prejudice

e.g., on workers setting production goals

BIG PICTURE

Start with Whole

Meaningful experience via gestalten properties

More than sum of elements

More than unconscious inference

Mind experiences wholes whose significance transcends the parts

not simply more but unique entities

e.g., MELODY:

a unitary whole; not simply a string of notes

a significant, meaningful structure

Journal

Contemporary Issues:
Historical Framework of Contemporary Psychology

Unit 11

The Evolution of Behaviorism

Behaviorism

based on the studies of Ivan Pavlov

subject’s response to stimuli

external environment

Patterns

how subject relates training and conditioning to rewards and punishment

John Watson: unconscious and mind should not be included in Psychology

Behaviorism Post-Watsonian

“Neobehaviorism” 1930s-1960s

Edward Tolman; Clark Hull; B.F. Skinner

behavior should be the focus of Psychology

accept theoretical speculation of the human mind

Evolutionary continuum

Learning/conditioning

Events in the 1920s leading to “neobehaviorism”

Watson’s continued propagandizing

Translation of Pavlov’s lectures into English

Logical positivism:

the logical analysis of scientific knowledge

Scientific language should never refer to anything unobservable

only statements verifiable through direct observation are meaningful

the verification principle

Link unobservable constructs w/ measurable events

Logical Positivism & Verification

Operationism Provided the link

the definition of a scientific idea relies upon the processes utilized to mandate it

each idea can be explained by a sole viewable and measurable action.

defined in terms of the specific methodological operations from which they are or measured

Operational definitions: e.g., hunger  24 hours without food

Enables replication

Converging operations

Increased confidence when the same outcomes result from multiple operational definitions of the same construct

Began in Europe (Berlin & Vienna) in 1920, moved to US in 1930

Edwin R. Guthrie (1886-1959):
Contiguity, Contiguity, Contiguity

1912: PhD – Penn; University of Washington

One Trial Learning

Psychology of Learning (1935)

One-trial learning; Central role: contiguity

Movements: minute responses made by the muscles that get associated with impinging stimuli – learn responses.

Acts: conglomerate of a number of learnt movements – learnt behaviors, like learning to press keys on a keyboard.

Guthrie & Horton study (1946): 1 trial learning

Each cat learned own peculiar stereotypical escape movement

No reinforcement needed to learn

Reinforcement prevented unlearning.

All forgetting involves new learning (1 trial forgetting)

Break bad habits – ID stimuli and substitute new responses

Eval: Vague; minimal empirical support

Edward C. Tolman (1886-1959):
“Purposive Behaviorism”

Organism Produce Behavior For Some Adaptive Purpose

Individuals act on beliefs, attitudes, changing conditions, and strive toward goals

behavior is not a response to a stimulus but is cognitive coping with a pattern of stimuli.

MIT: physics, math, chem (read W. James)

1915  PhD, Harvard (Yerkes); retroactive inhibition

Gestalt influence (Koffka & Lewin)

Northwestern (dismissed 2nd anti-war), then Berkeley

Learning Theory

Molar rather than molecular: Rejected simple S-R

Purposive: Behavior goal directed

Intervening Cognitive Variables

Tolman’s Latent Learning

Learning not seen in behavior at the time of learning; manifests later when a suitable motivation and circumstances appear

i.e., Sub always learning, food just shows learning

Tolman: Theorizing At The Molar Level

Place vs. Response learning

rats learn the place where they have been rewarded rather than the particular movements required to get there

Rat starts @ A; Food is @ B

Response learning: run down hall & turn right

Place learning: Food always found in the same place

Start @ C; if turn rt (S-R) will not get food

Cognitive Map

Cognitive Maps

Rats learn top maze (4 days)

Start @ A; food @ G

No errors possible

Then given bottom maze

Can’t do ‘normal’ route (it doesn’t exist)

Tend to select arms 5 or 6

i.e., Know the general direction of the goal

Cognitive maps in rats and men (1948)

“…humans have cognitive maps that not only situate them in space, but within a broader network of causal, social and emotional relationships. A narrow map can lead one to discount outsiders; a broader map to understanding and empathy.”

In 1950s Fired from Berkeley – Loyalty Oath

Rehired 2 years later

Eval: method of maze learning

no “Tolmanians”; Animal Cognition

Clark Hull (1884-1952)
A Hypothetico-Deductive System

Polio @ 26; read W. James while recovering

had wanted to be an engineer

1918: PhD, Wisconsin (Jastrow, student of Hall)

Quantitative Aspects of the Evolution of Concepts (1920),

Dissertation on concept learning

Preview of learning model featuring gradual increase of habit strength

Wisconsin faculty (1918-1928)

Aptitude Testing (1928)

Hypnosis and Suggestibility: An Experimental Approach (1933)

Yale’s (1928-1952)

Interdisciplinary Institute of Human Relations

Pro-seminar on his work

Hypothetical-Deductive System

Currently in use

observation

systematic controlled observation

experimental testing of the hypothesis

H-D method:

Derive postulates

Deduce testable conclusions

Experimentally test

Postulate 4

Habit strength (SHR): S-R contiguity & reinforcement

Drive is a bio/tissue need

Stim – Drive

Reinforcement as drive reduction

Primary vs. secondary (learned) drives

i.e., Drive Reduction Theory

A Hypothetico-Deductive System (cont.)

S-R link = anything that might affect how an organism responds

learning, fatigue, disease, injury, motivation, etc.

Reaction potential (sEr) = D x sHr

Drive (D); e.g., hours without food

Habit Strength (sHr); Function of # of reinforced trials

EVAL: 1940-1950: leading exper. psych in U.S.

Important collaborator  Kenneth Spence

Rapid decline after 1960

Percentage of articles in JEP citing Hull (or Spence)

1940  4%; 1950  39%; 1960  24%; 1970  4%

Low Generalizability

Limited practical applications

Elaborate theory based on overly simple research situations (e.g., “straight” mazes)

Many predictions not supported

B. F. Skinner (1904-1990)
A Radical Behaviorism

failed writer; went to Harvard for Psych

Harvard – introspection; BFS was bored – bio/physio/etc

PhD Harvard (1931), Univ Fellow until 1936, then Minn.

The Behavior of Organisms (1938)

Type S conditioning  Pavlovian

Two stimuli paired, producing same response

Type R conditioning  operant

Behavior produces predictable consequences

Minnesota 9 years, then a few in Indiana

In Minn – pigeons roosted outside his window, they became his subjects

1948  returns to Harvard to stay

No Interest in Psyché – “Black Box” approach

Operant Conditioning

Operant conditioning

(Remember Thorndike’s Cats)

Controlled environment (operant chamber)

Rate of response as prime DV (cumulative recorder)

Experimental analysis of behavior

Effects of positive or negative consequences

Stimulus control

Schedules of reinforcement

A Radical Behaviorism (continued)

Opposed formal theory

Preferred an inductive strategy

Create theory from database

The problem of explanatory fictions

Must distinguish clearly between what is known and what is not known and to draw the boundaries accurately (they don’t)

invent fictional constructs that purport to explain behavioral phenomena but are really just new names for the phenomena

Dangers of labels becoming explanations

The technological ideal

Goal: not just predict & understand behavior, but to control it

Project Pigeon

WWII guided missile system using pigeons

Applications to child rearing and teaching

Walden Two (1948)

Utopian community built on operant principles

Became widely read in the 1960s

Skinner – Project Pigeon

Target shown on screen, pigeon pecks on target.

Pigeon wired to control so its pecking guides bomb to target

Evaluating Skinner

“Radical” behaviorism outside mainstream experimental psychology

Devoted group of followers though

Applied Behavioral Analysis (Behavior Management)

Animal training

Management

Education

As with Watson

Vigorous promoter to the general public

In contrast with Tolman and Hull

Featured applicability of conditioning to improve everyday life

Also in contrast with Tolman and Hull

The IQ Zoo

Started by the Brelands

early students of Skinner @ U Minnesota

Worked on Project Pigeon

Trained animals for TV ads, fairs, etc.

IQ Zoo

Instinctive drift: biological limits of conditioning (Breland and Breland (1961)

animals can be trained to do

human-like behaviors, using operant

conditioning techniques

over time, species-typical behaviors

intrude on the performance

Chicken tic-tack-toe in NYC Chinatown

Journal

Contemporary Issues:
Historical Framework of Contemporary Psychology

Unit 12

Mental Illness & Its Treatment

Early Ideas About Psychopathology

What was Freud reacting against ?

Ancient Ideas About Mental Illness

evil spirits caused mental disorders

to drive out the spirits

induced vomiting

Starvation

skull drilling

Trephining (10K – 5K BCE): hole chipped into skull

through opening, evil spirit(s)– causing the psychopathology–would be

released and the individual would be cured

neolithic (3500 BC) ; patient survived

Egypt

1st known Mental Hospital (29th Century BCE)

Temple of Imhotep

1st ‘Psychiatrists’ (Temple Sleep)

dream interpreting to discover source of illness.

1st known Psychiatric Text (20th Century BCE)

Dealt with hysteria

Mental Illness = Physical Illness

opium to induce visions

rituals & prayers to specific gods

Later:

used recreation (concerts, dances, & painting)

Mind was subservient to Body

The chapter begins with a brief overview of historical trends in the treatment of psychopathology.

Early beliefs that evil spirits caused mental disorders led to efforts intended to drive out the spirits; sufferers endured such treatments as floggings, induced vomiting, starvation, and skull drilling.

Although the sixteenth century witnessed the creation of special hospitals for the insane, the inhumane conditions and barbaric treatments served to isolate patients from the rest of humanity rather than to improve their lives.

Reformers such as Philippe Pinel and Dorothea Dix advocated for—and achieved—institutional reform.

Religious Views

Mesopotamia/Babylon (Cradle of Civilization)

Priests treated ‘Possession’ – magico-religious

Monothesim

Hebrews: punishment from God for sin

God also the ultimate healer so appeal to God for cure

Islam: possession by Jinn (sprits; good or evil)

supernatural intervention not necessarily malignant

Texts (10th Century): definitions, symptoms, & Tx

Psychiatric ward of Baghdad hospital

Wards didn’t exist in – fear of demonic possessions

Christian (4th Cent): Evil Spirits/Devil

Tx: torture & execution

15th century – Inquisition (300 yrs)

18th century – Tx: institutionalization (brutal jails)

Greeks

Thales: mental illness as natural event

Away from mystical causes

Source inside the sufferers themselves

Pythagoras: brain is source of mental disturbances.

biological humors: mental illnesses result of disequilibrium of basic harmonies

good-bad, love-hate, single-plural, and limited-unlimited

Hippocrates: brain as the seat of consciousness

mental illness = pathology in the brain

Mental Ill = disparity between dream content & reality

advocated exercise & tranquility

in some cases, bloodletting to reestablish humoral balance

STILL: most Greek medicine men continued to support magico-religious demonology as a cause of mental illness

The Enlightenment

1600s: Restraint; Sedated with opium

“Enlightened” reform: ‘Moral Treatment’

removing inmates’ chains

housing them in a pleasant environment

decent food

therapeutic use of occupational tasks

Phillipe Pinel (1745-1826) in France

“Moral Treatment”

Treat people like patients not animals

Listen to complaints

Case Histories (dramatic rise in cure rates)

His assistant Poussin, a former inmate, had many of the ideas

William Tuke (1732-1822) in England

Businessman & Quaker

York Retreat for the care of the insane in 1796

Similar moral treatment strategy in farm setting

Early Amer. Treatment

Samuel Willard (1748-1801)

first hospital for mental illness in the USA (Uxbridge, MA)

Cold water immersion (used in England)

i.e., Shock Tx

Better than 1600s “Asylums” in Christian Europe

Better than family care where shame & stigma

Pt. often abused & restrained or abandoned &

left to a life of begging and vagrancy.

Benjamin Rush (1745-1813)

father of American psychiatry

Medical model – disease

Observations and Inquiries upon the Diseases of the Mind (1812)

Believed Vascular Inflammation of Brain was cause

Bloodletting

The “tranquilizer chair” – controls flow of blood to brain

Reforming Asylums

Dorothea Dix (1802-1887)

Born in Maine, parents alcoholic & father abusive

At 14 she lived with great aunt in Worcester for 4 years

Ran a school for 6-8yo girls (not allowed in public schools)

1822-36 School in Boston

Ill; doc suggest Europe

Met with reformers (mostly in England). Returned 1841

Taught Sunday School class for woman inmates; found mentally ill, developmentally delayed & criminals all mixed together in unheated, unfurnished, and foul-smelling quarters

Brought to Courts & won (1884)

Method  toured places where mentally were housed and exposed poor care, neglect, and abuse

Over time, resulted in creation of 47 mental hospitals

Clifford Beers (1876-1943)

Wrote of asylum conditions after experiencing them

The Mind That Found Itself (1908) – autobio

Started mental hygiene movement (Mental Health America)

The Kirkbride Plan
“building-as-cure”

Thomas Kirkbride (1809–1883) proposed a system of state mental hospitals based on the Moral Treatment philosophy

He was superintendent of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane

Founded precursor of American Psychiatric Association

Building: a special apparatus for the care of lunacy

sunlight & fresh air

privacy & comfort

Attractive grounds

Dorothea Dix testified to NJ Legislature in 1844

people with mental illness were being housed in county jails, private homes, and the basements of public buildings

New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum 1st based on Kirkbride Plan

Today it is Trenton Psychiatric Hospital

Several Dozen built: 1877 Worcester State Hospital

Out of favor by 1900s

Diagnosing Mental Illness

Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926) (Contemporary of Freud)

Medical degree (neuropath), but also studied with Wundt

Compendium der Psychiatrie 1883

Psych is branch of medicine; Mental disease is biological

Classification scheme for mental illness

Psychiatrie (1899, 6th ed)

Based on clinical syndrome vs symptoms

common patterns of symptoms

2 main (13 in all)

Manic-depressive psychosis (mood disorder)

Fluctuates, recoverable

Dementia praecox (thinking disorder)

progressive, neurodegen, no recovery

Basis for WHO & DSM

Supported ‘Moral Treatment” vs. Freud, etc.

Psychological Cause
of Mental Illness

Emotional Factors More Important Than Biological Factors

Mesmerism and Hypnosis
Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815)

Trance states had been around for long time – magic

Mesmer: Physician (U Vienna 1776)

Newton universal gravitation (late 1600)

Animal Magnetism (influences act on human body)

Poor health resulted from misaligned magnetic forces

Cure was to realign forces

Under his influence  trance, then recovery and relief

1st magnify; then transmit own AM to patient via magnet

“Baquet”  group mesmerism therapy

container filled with water, glass, and magnetized iron filings w/ iron rods protruding from it – Sub touched rods

First Vienna, then Paris

(Ben) Franklin Commission (1784)

Cure by magnetism but also if no magnetism – Charlatan

Missed: suggestion (placebo), not magnetism

Mesmerism and Hypnosis (continued)

In England (1785)

Demonstrated effects on pain reduction (amputations)

Renamed by Braid (1843)  neurypnology (sleep of the nervous system – neuro + hypnology)

Liebeult & Bernheim (France)

School of Nancy

Suggestibility as a normally distributed trait

Hypnosis: natural curative process via mental suggestion

For highly suggestible patients  cures

Jean Charcot (1825-1893)

Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris (Grand Hypnotism)

Hypnosis and hysteria  same underlying pathology

i,e, both neuro, not psych

Only hysterics could be hypnotized

Hypnosis could be used to diagnose hysteria

Not seen as a cure

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Psychoanalysis

Freudian myth – two elements

Completely at odds with everyone else

Absolute originality

Maintained by

Destroying papers twice (1885, 1907)

Total Control

Picking loyal follower as biographer (Jones, British Psych)

Self Promotion – Freud (1917):

3 great shocks to the collective Ego:

Copernicus (15th cent.) Earth NOT center of universe

Charles Darwin (19th century)

Freud (20th century) The Unconscious

Psych Environment For Freud

1895: 1st Book: On the origins of psychoanalysis

Wundt 63 yo

Titchener 28 yo (Cornell x 2 yrs) Structuralism just beginning

Functionalism just beginning

No Behaviorism (Watson was 17 yo)

No Gestalt Psych (Wertheimer was 15 yo)

Freud Died in 1939 (so 44 years later)

Wundtian Psych, Structuralism & Functionalism Over

Gestalt Psych moving from Germany to US

Behaviorism dominant in US

Common To All (pre-Freud)

Psychology Was Academic

Science/Lab Based: Wundt as major influence

MAJOR FOCUS: Sensation, Perception, Learning

Psychoanalysis:

Not Academic

Not Science/Lab Based

MEDICAL ORIGINS: Medicine & Psychiatry

Different:

Goals:

Subject Matter: Psychopath & Abnormal Behavior

Unconscious

Methods: Clinical Observation (vs lab experiments)

Freud’s Unique Contribution

Unconscious

Wundt & Titchener rejected UC

cannot use Introspection

cannot reduce to basic sensory elements

Functionalism: exclusive focus on Consciousness

James admitted the notion of UC process

Angell’s 1904 text – 2 pages to UC

Woodworth’s 1924 text – few brief comments

Watson’s Behaviorism rejected both UC & C

UC is simply what Sub hasn’t yet verbalized

Antecedents to Freud’s UC

Leibniotz (early 18th Cent)

Monads: individual elements of reality (not atoms); not solely matter/physics

Range from UC (petite perception) to C (apperceptions)

Friedrich Herbart (19th Cent):

refined with threshold concept

< threshold = UC; > threshold = C

< Thresh due to inhibition

Gustav Fechner (19th Cent): also threshold

Iceberg metaphor (not inhibition)

Influenced Freud (he quoted Fechner)

General Zeitgeist
Of 1880s

UC very much a part of

several popular books

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde 1889

Freud (continued)

MD Vienna (1881)

Desired a career in research

Poor pay, wanted to marry so clinical practice

Influenced by materialistic Zeitgeist

Mentor  Ernst Brücke (colleague of Helmholtz)

all living things are dynamic & regulated by laws of chemistry and physics

psychodynamics.

Six months with Charcot (Hypnosis)

Prepping for medical practice

Meynert Psychiatric clinic  encounters hysteria

Decided to become a neurologist

Meynert

disturbances in brain development predispose for psychiatric illness

certain psychoses are reversible.

Anna O Case

Studies on Hysteria by Freud and Breuer (1895)

Anna O – a pseudonym for Bertha Pappenheim

Founder: “Jüdischer Frauenbund” (League of Jewish Women)

Under care of Joseph Breuer (1842-1925)

Wide range of hysteric symptoms:

cough, paralysis of the extremities, disturbances of vision, hearing, and speech, hallucination, and loss of consciousness

During episode; she would mutter words

Talking cure (under hypnosis)

under hypnosis, told her words she said when she was “absent”

Stopped hypnosis but continued ‘free-association’

Seemingly eliminated Sx by talking through them to their source

Father’s illness

Freud’s insight

Hysterics “suffer from reminiscences”

Hysteric symptoms symbolically related to cause

1895, with Breuer  Studies on Hysteria

Included Anna O. and other cases

Darwinian influence

Behavior not always rational

Sexual motivation for behavior

Methods for accessing unconscious

Hypnosis: tried but rejected

Free Association

Dream Analysis

Seduction hypothesis

Hysteria is result of sexual abuse

Abandoned, after self analysis, in favor of “imagined seduction”

Led to Oedipal complex & focus on sexual motivation

Creating Psychoanalysis

First decade of 20th century

Highly productive

Interpretation of Dreams (1900)

The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901)

Three Essays on Sexuality (1905)

Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious (1905)

Invited by Hall to Clark’s 20th anniversary celebration

Series of lectures (1909)

For Freud  international recognition

For American psychologists

Not sure what to make of Freud

Hall a big fan though

James less so

Psychoanalysis (continued)

Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)

Thanatos added to Eros

The Ego and the Id (1923)

Id, Ego, Superego structure introduced

Anxiety and defense

Anxiety: aversive inner state

Objective, neurotic (ID runs free), and moral anxiety

Humans reduce anxiety (tension) through defense mechanisms

Anna Freud’s influence on theory of defense mechanisms

Anna made comprehensive list

Repression and others

Sublimation: The only “successful” defense

Anna never left father

Oedipal: sublimated Id into psychological creativity which advanced Freudian theory, her father’s greatest love

Psychoanalysis

The Theory Evolves

Freud’s followers  loyalty then dissent

1o issue: universality of sexual motivation

Alfred Adler (1870-1937)

Emphasized social factors over biological (sex)

Individual psychology (later influenced Maslow)

Main concept  inferiority complex

Carl Jung (1875-1961)

Freud’s adopted eldest son, crown prince and successor

Word association task (to access the unconscious)

Sent to Freud 1906; relation lasted till 1913

Presented at Clark conference (1909)

Analytical psychology

Collective Unconscious

Psychoanalysis

Freud’s Followers

Psychoanalysis in America

Not well received in academic circles

Tried to examine Freudian concepts empirically or to translate them into other terms (e.g., behavioral)

Psychoanalysts  argued that critics were being critical because of unresolved unconscious issues

Popular with the public and the psychiatric community

Psychoanalysis was “smuggled” into America by Viennese and Berlin exiles (fleeing rise of Nazi)

American psych a mixed bag of medicine, science, & flimflam

Issue: Psychoanalysis a method, not yet a discipline

Post WWII: Freud fits the modern sensibility

Acceptable to talk about SEX

WW II; Freud explored the underworld of dark things

Evaluating Freud

Contributions

Importance of Unconscious

We’re not always aware of reasons for our behavior

Importance of childhood

In some cases, mental illness can be helped with non-medical strategies (i.e., psychoanalysis)

Criticisms

Overly dogmatic

e.g., excessive emphasis on sex

Biased interpretations of cases

Limited number of cases

Fit the data to his theory (should be the reverse)

1960s

political radicalism, postmodernism, feminism

Anxiety – psychopharmacology remedies

Does Freud still matter?

Jerome Bruner

“His theory provides a dramatic, indeed, a tragic view of the human condition.”

“The imagery of the theory, moreover, has an immediate resonance with the dialectic of experience … it fits the human
plight…”

“Finally, the image of man presented was thoroughly secular… the image has found a ready home in the rising, liberal intellectual middle class…”

Mar. 29, 1999

TIME 100: Scientists & Thinkers

Does Freud still matter?

Eric Kandel:

Much of what we do is unconscious.

dreams have psychological meaning

infants are active, thinking individuals who have sensual as well as painful experiences

listening carefully to a patient, you can get a lot of insight into what the unconscious is talking about.

3/27/06

Eric Kandel Unconscious Decision Making

Journal

Contemporary Issues:
Historical Framework of Contemporary Psychology

Unit 13

Psychology’s Practitioners

Medical Approach
to Mental Illness

Great and Desperate “Cures”

Pyrotherapy (fever therapy) (Wagner-Jauregg)

Noted that high fever may cure syphilis (Nobel 1927)

malaria parasites to treat dementia paralytica (end stage syphilis)

Had treatment for malaria

Insulin Shock Therapy (Sakel)

low (sub-coma) doses of insulin helped drug addicts and psychopaths

Blood sugar lowered (20 times over months) to treat schizophrenia

Metrazol shock therapy (Meduna)

Epilieptics had high brain glia; schizophrenics had low

Induced multiple seizures in schizophrenics to increase glia

schizophrenics rarely epileptic; few who had seizures less schizo

Those with epilepsy were seldom mentally ill

Electroshock therapy (Cerletti)

Worked with electroshock to induce epileptic fits in dogs

Schizo prevented/cured by seizures

Induce brief seizure; Temporary relief (severe depression)

Remains in use today

Shell Shock in World War I

Defensive psychological reaction to extreme war trauma

Helplessness / disoriented behavior

first thorough description by C. S. Myers of Cambridge in 1915

Trained in Psychophysics

Physical injury: shock waves from shells creating a cerebral lesion

i.e., a concussion

BUT many showed with no exposure to explosives

Realized it was a Psychological Injury

Estimated 80,000 cases in British army (250,000 all told)

1917, “shell shock” banned as a diagnosis in the British Army

Early on: a weakness not found in “good” units

Treatment

Psych: few days’ rest by his local medical officer: if no improve

“NYDN – Not Yet Diagnosed Nervous” & evac to special centers

10/1916 – 3/1919 Craiglockhart Hospital

W. H. R. Rivers

men of unquestioned bravery could succumb to overwhelming fear

Arthur John Brock

‘cure by functioning’ reestablish links with their environment

not purely a wartime phenomenon

Umbrella term for operations that purposely damaged brain tissue in order to treat mental illness

Undesired behaviors in neurological connections – break connections & you could stop the behaviors

Pioneered in Portugal by Egas Moniz 1935

Fulton & Jacobsen 1935 lobotomy on chimpanzees at Yale

Human: Through temple, sever connections between frontal lobes (rational control) and emotional centers (Nobel 1949)

Procedures:

Cut hole in the skull & injecting ethanol to destroy the fibers

Surgical wire – when rotated creates circular lesion in brain.

Improvement in procedure by

Amarro Fiamberti (Italy) transorbital approach

Walter Freeman and James Watts (US) refined Transorbital lobotomy (quicker, less medical recovery time)

Disappeared in 1950s 2nd improved drug approaches

50,000 done in US

The Lobotomy (highly controversial)

Clinical Psychology

Lightner Witmer (1867-1956)

“Clinical Psychology” ; 1st Psych Clinic

Note: born right after Civil War

U Penn brought Cattell as 1st Psych Prof in US

Worked on individ diff in RT; Witmer became Cattell’s assistant

Witmer – trained in finance & poly-sci; U Penn for Law

Cattell left for Columbia

Cattell sent him to Wundt; PhD 1892

returned to U Penn as laboratory director & teaching Child Psych

began seeing cases of students with various school-related problems (e.g., poor spelling)

1896: introduced term Clinical Psych & created 1st clinic

Orthogenics: science of normal development of mind & body

Human potential

1907: found journal, The Psychological Clinic

Lead essay  coins term “clinical psychology”

Work in the clinic similar to modern school psychology

APA Division 16 (School Psychology) – annual Witmer Award

Clinical Psychology

WWI: Army testing for mental fitness of soldiers

Psych = Psychometrics; limited to administering tests

Psychiatric control

Therapy done by MDs/Psychiatry

need for Tx with returning soldiers; clinical psych called in

Difficult to gain recognition in APA

1917: American Association of Clinical Psychologists

Short-lived – APA created “clinical section” and associate member status in the 1920s

1937 – American Association for Applied Psychology

1943 – “intersociety” convention led to new APA

brought together various societies representing psychology

Division structure

APA 1o Academic; expand to include clinicians & applied

1988: APS founded (Psychological Science)

APA too clinical

Overwhelming # of WWII psychiatric casualties

44,000 veterans suffered from various mental disorders

Produced increased need for psychological services

Psychiatry could not manage caseload

Standardized Training programs (gov. pushed)

Boulder conference (1949)

Develop process to eval & approve doctoral training programs in applied psychologies (clinical, school, counseling)

Scientist-practitioner (Bolder) model (David Shakow)

Worcester State Hospital (1932); research on schizophernia

1st clinical internship program; Degree  PhD (1946)

Ph.D. in Psychology

Scientists/practice vs. practitioners with science background

Expertise in diagnosis and treatment

Research-based dissertation

Critique of the Boulder Model

Basically a ‘Neither Fish Nor Fowl’ criticism

Students don’t become excellent scientists nor excellent practitioners

They study research methods that they will not use in professional practice

This takes time away from formal training and apprenticeship in the art and craft of psychotherapy

Stress data gathering over critical thinking & theory-building

thus an uncritical approach to empiricism

Short-cycle research (within the timeframe of training cycle)

vs longitudinal & more intricate studies more typical of researchers

Basically, skills needed for clinical practice are different (& incompatible) re: needed for research

The Psy.D.

Criticism of Boulder Model

Training in both research and practice, not enough emphasis was placed on either

Few publications by graduates of Ph.D.

Students not trained effectively for practice

1964 APA committee

Science & Practice though related – not the same

Create doctorate of practice (like M.D./ D.D.S./ O.D.)

The Vail conference (1973)

Proposed Practitioner-Scientist model

More emphasis on practice, less on research

Doctor of Psychology (Psy.D.)

2,000 hour supervised internship vs dissertation

Does Psychotherapy Work?

Many case histories but no scientific assessment

Same as in medicine

Eysenck study (1952) on neurosis (n=19)

Traditional therapies (primarily analytic) not effective

Psychoanalysis: 44% improvement over 5 years

“Eclectic” therapy: 64% improvement

No therapy (Tx by GPs): 72% improvement

1961 similar results

1963 Eysenck-Strupp debate

E – behavioral therapist (critic of psychotherapy)

S – psychoanalysis – blasted study (methods & alt. interpretations)

Eysenck-Strupp debate, 50 years later

Original Debate introduced psychotherapy outcomes research

case histories were no longer enough and outcome studies using randomized trials with control groups became more common.

Since orig debate, tremendous boom in research articles examining the psychotherapy process and measuring treatment effectiveness.

Yet still strong resistance to the type of evidence-based treatment that E & S both endorsed.

Still, general consensus that some treatments are better than others for specific disorders based on scientific psychological principles.

Psychotherapists recognize that actual evidence is more important than opinion in determining what works and what does not.

Q (Cf): is Psychotherapy amenable to strict scientific assessment?

How do we Operationalize; Control; DV; IV; etc?

New Approaches To Psychotherapy

Behavior Therapy

Conditioning principles applied to therapy

Systematic Desensitization

Origins: Mary Jones (1924) study, eliminating fear in “Peter”

Joseph Wolpe (1950s): fear in cats

Hans Eysenck (1950s): coined term

Underlying cause irrelevant; get rid of problem

Behaviour Research and Therapy (first journal—1963)

Humanistic psychology rejects this behavior only approach

Humanistic Psychology (3rd Force)

Psychodynamic (problem)

Ignore Critical Human Aspect: Potential Development

How we achieve Selfhood & Actualize Potential

Humanistic

Emphasis on free will and responsibility

People not tied to their pasts

People strive for meaningful lives

Natural tendency is growth toward self-actualization

Reaching potential

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)

Ph.D. 1934 Columbia w/ Alfred Adler (Freudian)

1951-1969 Brandeis

Each person’s unique perspective based on their construal

how individuals perceive, comprehend, & interpret world

Self-Actualization vs. Deficiency Needs

Studied attributes of self-actualizers (e.g., Wertheimer)

Hierarchy of needs; Peak experiences

Carl Rogers (1902-1987)

Columbia PhD (1931) – Teachers College

w/ Leta Hollingworth (gifted children)

Not impressed with psychoanalysis

U Chicago: Counseling Center

Client-centered therapy (1951)

Emphasis on therapeutic atmosphere to help client take responsibility for change

unconditional positive regard

Empathy

congruence (ideal self = actual experience)

Therapist genuineness

Client has unconditional worth

Empathy (reflection technique)

Emphasized Research on therapy effectiveness

Psychology in Business and Industry

Significant growth in 1920s and 1930s

Scott Company (Walter Dill Scott)

Consulting service to business and industry

Psychological Corporation (James McKeen Cattell)

Organization of applied psychologists available to business

Only succeeded after Cattell ousted in 1926

Morris Viteles (1898-1996)

Major text naming the field  Industrial Psychology (1932)

Hawthorn Effect (1920)

Q: Are our employees more productive in a well-lit environment than they are in a poorly-lit environment

A: yes along with having a clear workstation, breaks, teams, etc.

Increased productivity regardless of changes in conditions

Positive effects of being in an experiment

“Human factor” more important than working conditions

Lots of controversy even today

Journal

Contemporary Issues:
Historical Framework of Contemporary Psychology

Unit 14

Psychology’s Researchers

Cognitive Psychology Arrives (Again)

Cognitive research during neobehaviorism

Stroop (1935)

Read list of words printed in black vs the same list of words printed in incongruent colors

no diff in reading time

naming of colors for a list of words printed in incongruent colors

74% longer to name ink colors of incongruent words

Jenkins & Dallenbach (1924)

F/U on Ebbinghaus: no drop retention @8-14 hrs because E asleep

Learn list @ midnight & sleep vs early morn before classes

remembered more if they slept during the retention interval

Retroactive interference reduced by sleep

European Psychology:
not affected by behaviorism

Jean Piaget

Frederick C. Bartlett

Jean Piaget (1896-1980)

1920s & 30s in Europe, not in U.S. until 1960s

Doctorate in biology (evolutionary adaptation; stage theory)

Binet Institute: develop French versions of English intelligence tests

important differences between the thinking of adults and children

Pre-Piaget: children less competent thinkers than adults

***NEXT SLIDE***

young children think in strikingly different ways compared to adults

made a systematic study of cognitive development.

The Language and Thought of the Child (1923)

Piaget’s Cognitive Theory:

Schemas (general concepts that comprise understanding of world)

Adaptation: transition from one stage to another

equilibrium, assimilation, and accommodation

Stages Theory of Development

sensorimotor,

preoperational

concrete operational

formal operational

Children as Little Adults

“Pinkie” 11yo

Looks like an adult

Dress

Body Proportions

Shakespeare’s Juliet

Behavior of an adult

She was 13yo

Piaget Changed That

Hall as well by introducing Adolescence

RETURN

Frederick C. Bartlett (1886-1969)

Cambridge University

studied several areas; lab director & Prof of Exp. Psych

Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology (1932)

Took issue with Ebbinghaus nonsense syllable strategy

Studied memory in more ‘ecological’ contexts

Emphasize memorizer vs materials to be memorized

i.e., a social psych of memory

War of the Ghosts (In Remembering)

***NEXT SLIDE***

Constructive memory and schemata

Recall at various times

Longer recall gap – more forgetting

Memory constructed with reference to cultural beliefs

Contributions:

“ecologically valid” experimental tasks

memory is reconstructive

“schema” to represent generic knowledge

The War of the Ghosts

Edwardian English participants read Native American Folklore titled “War of the Ghosts”.

S told to recall the story at extended intervals numerous times.

Found:

longer intervals between reading & recall, S less accurate & forgot much of the information from story

elements of the that story failed to fit into listeners’ schemata, they were omitted or transformed into more familiar forms.

Recall mirrored own culture

e,g, remembering “canoes” from the story as “boats”.

KEYS

Memory is Generative

Over time – recall became:

Shoter

Increased omissions

Increased inaccuracies

Recall altered to make more consistent with own culture

**RETURN**

Changes in Psychology

Internal to Psychology

Problems with behaviorism

Language (behaviorism had no way of dealing with this

Lashley – the serial order problem

Brain physiology makes sequential S-R impossible

External to Psychology

Computer science

Computer-brain metaphor

Flow charts

Information theory

Linguistics

The So-called “Cognitive Revolution”

Kuhn (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Paradigms

Normal science

Anomalies, then crisis

New paradigm (revolution)

Amer Psych

1879- mentalist (consciousness & introspection)

1913- behaviorist

1956- cognitivist

Thomas Leahy (1992) NOT scientific revolutions

Cognitive psychology (behaviorism)

Didn’t develop in response to any crisis

Took too long – more evolutionary than revolutionary

Kuhn’s book, in the 60s, may be responsible for bringing “revolution” into the discussion

Landmarks: Early Cognitive Psych

George Miller (1920-2012)

Miller (1956) The magical number seven plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information.

Limits of STM

Donald Broadbent (1926-1993)

information processing metaphor

Filter model of selective attention

Perception and Communication (1958)

Miller, Galanter, & Pribram

Plans and the Structure of Behavior (1960)

TOTE (Test-Operate-Test-Exit) replace S-R

a goal is tested to see if it has been achieved and if not, an operation is performed to achieve the goal

Cybernetics & feedback systems

Neisser’s Cognitive Psychology (1967)

an attack on behaviorism

mental processes could be measured and analyzed

Cognition and Reality (1976): many of the same themes as Bartlett

Cognition and Reality
Ulric Neisser (1976)

Emphasizing ecologically valid memory studies

From cognitive psychology to cognitive science

Cognitive science  interdisciplinary

Psychology, epistemology, anthropology, linguistics, computer science, math, …

Evaluating Cognitive Psychology

Pervasive impact

Cognitive factors in other subdisciplines

social cognition in social psychology

cognitive theories of depression

Criticisms of Cog Psych

Skinner: explanatory fiction problem

i.e., no empirical evidence of internal states

Cognitive Neuroscience doesn’t explain things

Computer metaphor

Overlooks emotions and motivation

Challenges from

Dynamical systems: no need for Info Processing

Embodied Cognition: all aspects of cog determined by body processes (like motor system)

Cf: brain really doesn’t work like a digital computer

Other Research Areas

The Brain and Behavior

Karl Lashley (1890-1958) 1911 PhD JHU – biology

Also studied with Watson, completed animal behavior research

Brain Mechanisms and Intelligence (1929)

Maze Learning via connections of neurons not ‘globally’

Mass Action: learning is distributed across all parts of the brain rather than stored in a single regions.

complex function of the brain is reduced proportionately to how much damage the brain has sustained, but not to the damage of any particular area of the brain.

In search of the engram 1950

Equipotentiality: brain has the ability to use any functioning part of the brain to do what a damaged part of the brain no longer can do

complex sequential behavior (playing piano) could not be S-R

Behavior controlled by a central, hierarchically organized program (not by simple environmental S-R)

The problem of serial order in behavior (1951)

Perception

James J. Gibson (1904-1979)

Princeton Ph.D. 1928; Edwin Holt (W. James student)

Ecological Perception

Connection with Neisser’s ecological validity

Affordances

Environmental Invariances

Moving through the environment

Focus of expansion

Optic flow

Eleanor J. Gibson (1910-2002)

Grad student of James Gibson @ Smith College; later married

Yale PhD (Clark Hull) 1938

Principles of Perceptual Learning and Development (1969)

Famous depth perception studies – visual cliff (1960)

Gibson’s Visual Cliff

Social Psychology

Floyd Allport (1890-1978)

Social Psychology (1924)

Group fallacy (1927)

There is no such thing as a group mind distinct from an individual

Leon Festinger (1919-1989)

Student of Kurt Lewin (University of Iowa, PhD 1942)

Theory of cognitive dissonance

Derives from Lewinian equilibrium concept

When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World. Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, Stanley Schachter (1956)

social behavior = responses of a thinking organism continually acting to bring order into his world

Note: left Social, Worked in Perception (60s), Archaeology (80s)

When Prophecy Fails (pt. 1)

Small apocalyptic cult. Leader received messages from “the Guardians,” (superior beings from another planet)

Told a flood would destroy the world on Dec 21, 1954.

Festinger et. al. observed group firsthand for months before and after the predicted apocalypse.

Many members quit their jobs & disposed of possessions in preparation for the apocalypse.

Doomsday came and went, Leader claimed that the world had been spared because of the “force of Good and light” that the group members had spread.

Group members adhered to beliefs even more strongly and began proselytizing with fervor.

When Prophecy Fails (pt. 2)

Festinger et.al, concluded that the following conditions lead to increased conviction in beliefs following disconfirmation (belief perseverance):

The belief must be held with deep conviction and be relevant to the believer’s actions or behavior. (thus, resistant to change)

The belief must have produced actions that are arguably difficult to undo. (thus, resistant to change)

The belief must be sufficiently specific and concerned with the real world such that it can be clearly disconfirmed.

The disconfirmatory evidence must be recognized by the believer. (thus pressure to change)

***The believer must have social support from other believers. – The group supports resistance to change

Specific case of Cognitive Dissonance

i.e., increased proselytizing reduced dissonance by producing the knowledge that others also accepted their beliefs

Stanley Milgram (1933-1984)

PhD from Harvard with Gordon Allport

Famous studies of obedience at Yale in the 1960s and 1970s

Obedience not a result of personality but the response to strong situational demands when individuals are faced with orders from those perceived to be in authority

Personality Psychology

Nomothetic vs. idiographic strategies

N: generalize objective law from the specific (study a population represented by individual) e.g., Trait Theory

I: understand the specific (study of the individual)

Henry Murray (1897-1967)

Background in medicine; strong interest in psychoanalysis & Jung’s Analytic Psych (was a patient)

Personology – emphasis on the entire individual

no isolated piece of behavior could ever be understood without taking into account the fully functioning person.

Primary method – case study

Developed TAT (Thematic Apperception Test): ambiguous test materials for assessing individual differences in

patterns of thought, attitudes, observational capacity, and emotional responses

Note: controversy about ethics of many of his experiments described as “purposely brutalizing.” One Sub: Ted Kaczynski (the unabomber)

Personality Psychology (cont)

Gordon Allport (1897-1967)

PhD 1922 (Harvard); H Langfeld & Münsterberg – Exp Psych

Studied Gestalt Psych in Europe (after PhD)

“Personality: Its Psychological and Social Aspects”

1st US personality course (taught @ Harvard)

rejected both psychoanalysis (he had met Freud), which he thought often went too deep, and behaviorism, which he thought often did not go deep enough

Personality: A Psychological Interpretation (1937)

Emphasis on case study & present context

e.g., Letters from Jenny (1965)

301 letters (1926-1937) of 58yo widow – Case Anal

Personality organized by “traits”

Cardinal traits

Central traits

Secondary traits

traits are “habits possessed of social significance” and become very predictable

Journal

C Fox, Page 1/1

25 April 2022

PS450: A Reflective Journal

You will keep a reflective journal that will be graded as Pass/Fail. It must include weekly or more frequent entries. Entries may be as long as you wish but should be a minimum of 1/2 page. The journal will be your self-reflection and critical thinking on all work including what happens in and out of the classroom. It is also a place for you to record questions or observations about readings & presentations. This is a place for reflection and thought, it is NOT a work log; do not just record what you are doing.

Please note – this is not a general life journal but one specific to our course. You can and should include things from your life and things that happen outside of class but write about how they are related to psychology and our class. For example, you going to the movies is nice but it doesn’t belong in this journal UNLESS you are reflecting on how the movie used color, or 3D, or perspective, or psychological profiling – things relevant to psychology.

You may struggle with this if you have never kept a journal before. There is a great deal of advice on the internet about keeping a journal and feel free to consult it. But first try this. Sit at a desk or table with your journal, or computer, or whatever you will write with. Do this at a time when you are not distracted (maybe you need to sit in your car to do this). Start writing, doesn’t matter what you write about – just write whatever you are thinking or feeling. Stay with it for 20 minutes, set a timer on your phone or wherever. At the end of 20 minutes feel free to continue if you want. If you have never kept a journal, you might want to do this every day during the 1st weeks of class to get in the habit. You may want to read the handout on examples.

You will submit your journal at the end of the course. This is a journal and so grammar, spelling, formatting, etc. will not be counted in the grading – BUT – remember, if I can’t tell what you are saying I can’t give you credit for it. If you hand write your journal, no need to type it out – submit to me the hard copy or send me scans. If you wrote it on a computer, send me it as an MS Word file (remember the file naming conventions in Syllabus.

Journal

Contemporary Issues:
Historical Framework of Contemporary Psychology

Unit 2

The Philosophical Context

Psychology has a long past, yet its real history is short. For thousands of years it has existed and has been growing older; but in the earlier part of this period it cannot boast of any continuous progress toward a riper and richer development. In the fourth century before our era that giant thinker, Aristotle, built it up into an edifice comparing very favorably with any other science of that time. But this edifice stood without undergoing any noteworthy changes or extensions, well into the eighteenth or even the nineteenth century. Only in recent times do we find an advance, at first slow but later increasing in rapidity, in the development of psychology.

Ebbinghaus (1908)

A Long Past

Psyche

part of human that dwells with the gods

Psychology  long past

Issues have long history in Philosophy

e.g., nature-nurture

e.g., how we acquire our knowledge of the world

epistemology

Psychology  brief history

Psychology relatively new as a discipline when Ebbinghaus was writing in 1908

Wundt’s lab at Leipzig was only 29 years old

The APA was only 16 years old

A Long Past – Brief Hx

René Descartes (1596-1650)
The Beginnings of Modern Science

French mathematician, scientist and philosopher

Educated in scholastic tradition at Jesuit College of La Flèche

Scholastic Aristotelian tradition based on final causal explanations

Renaissance skepticism

Religious crisis in Europe (questioning Church authority)

New Copernican system (heliocentric)

Sun, not earth is the center of the universe

D’s contemporaries  Bacon (induction), Galileo

Bacon: Novum Organum (1620) – New Tool – a rethinking of Aristotle’s Organum

Rationalist: Cogito ergo sum

“I am thinking therefore I exist.” (Discourse on Method )

Only certainty could serve as a basis for knowledge, and that he himself had a method for attaining such certainty.

Descartes: Discourse on Method

Discourse on Method – 1637 – four basic rules

Systematic doubt

Analysis – problems into subproblems

Synthesis – from simplicity to complexity

Check your work

Good presentism lesson here – revolutionary ideas at the time

Think for yourself – question authority

French commemorated the book’s

300th anniversary with a stamp in 1937

Descartes as a Nativist

Innate ideas vs. Derived ideas

Mind is born with ideas/knowledge

mind is not a ‘blank slate’ at birth, as later empiricists such as John Locke claimed.

not all knowledge is gained from experience and the senses

e.g., knowledge of God is innate in everybody as a product of the faculty of faith.

Leibniz (1646-1716) suggested that we are born with mathematical truisms – “necessary truths”.

Descartes as a Dualist

a substance dualist

Mind and body as separate substances/essences

Body: spatially extended

Mind: it thinks (not spatially extended)

Cartesian dichotomy

Animals: mechanical bodies (no minds)

Humans: mechanical bodies + nonmaterial minds

Q: how can mind stuff influence body stuff

Reflexes & Mind-Body Interactions

Animals spirits and “filaments”

mechanical movements

Pineal gland as locus of mind-body interaction

The British Empiricist

Epistemology: nature & origins of knowledge

John Locke (1632-1704)

Key point  all knowledge derives from experience

Tabula Rasa: blank slate

Sensation and reflection as primary processes

They “write on the slate”

Rejected innate ideas

The British Empiricist

Nature of reality: 10 vs. 2nd qualities of matter

Primary qualities: Objective properties of objects that are independent of any observer

such as solidity, extension, motion, number and figure

Secondary qualities: Subjective sensations in observers

such as color, taste, smell, and sound

“Associationist School”

Atomistic organizational structure for the mind

Complex ideas built from simple ideas

developed very specific principles elaborating how associations were developed & worked

Anticipated principles of conditioning & behaviorism

Ideas on education derived from empiricist philosophy

“shaping” children by controlling their experiences

George Berkeley (1685-1753)

Bishop, Church of Ireland

Subjective Idealism (orig. called immaterialism)

Denied distinction between primary & secondary qualities

Locke: all knowledge comes from experience

Thus: objects like tables and chairs are only ideas in the minds of perceivers (immaterial)

as a result, cannot exist without being perceived.

God (“permanent perceiver”)

An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision (1709) Applied empiricist ideas to visual perception

David Hartley (1705-1757)

Doctrine of Associations

“The course of reminiscence and of the thoughts generally, when not immediately dependent upon external sensation, is accounted for by the idea that there are always vibrations in the brain … determined by each man’s past experience, and by the circumstances of the moment…”

Psychophysical parallelism

Rules of association reduce to Temporal & Spatial Contiguity

David Hume (1711-1776)

No innate ideas

desire not reason governed human behavior

Associationism (Impressions and Ideas)

Rules of association

Resemblance

Contiguity

Cause and effect

Causality as predictable regularity

A Treatise of Human Nature (1739)

humans have no actual conception of the self, only of a bundle of sensations associated with the self.

‘Treatise’ has been called “the founding document of cognitive science” by Jerry Fodor

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

Most extreme version of empiricism

Not many defenders.

Raised in true empiricist principles (re Hume)

Educated by father, James Mill, philosopher, economist and senior official in the East India Company

Jeremy Bentham (utilitarianism)

Francis Place (social justice)

Knowledge of external world is Phenomenological

things are merely permanent possibilities of sensation

No place for knowledge based on relations of ideas

logical and mathematical necessity is psychological

we are merely unable to conceive any other possibilities

Key Contribution: Scientific Method

Mill & Scientific Method

Mill: Causal Relations (Inductive Logic)

Question: Does Eating X cause indigestion?

Method of agreement (if X, then Y)

All 8 ate coleslaw – “Eating coleslaw caused the indigestion.”

Method of difference (if not X, then not Y)

All ate same things except for 1 who also ate coleslaw – this 1 got sick

Joint method (combines agreement and difference)

4 sick (group Exp) & 4 not (group Control)

ate in pairs, E had coleslaw, C didn’t

Analogous to modern experimental & control groups

Method of concomitant variation

Degree of correlation between X and Y

5 students various degree of illness & various degree of coleslaw consumption (from none to a double helping)

Modern correlational logic

Rationalist Responses to Empiricism

Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716)

New Essays on Human Understanding

“there is nothing in the understanding which has not come from the senses, except the understanding itself, or the one who understands

Replaced Locke’s white paper metaphor with “veined marble”

“if veins marked out the shape of Hercules, then the block of marble would be more determined toward that shape, although it will still take some work to make the statue

i.e., inclinations, potentialities, dispositions, or habits

Gottfried Leibniz: Monads

Monad: simple, immaterial, mind-like substances that perceives the world around them

Some are aware of what they perceive (i.e., possess sensation or consciousness) – souls

Fewer are capable of self-consciousness and rational perceptions – minds

2 basic types of mental states:

Perceptions/Petite Perception: internal representations of the world

Apperception: reflective knowledge of the internal state of perception

Note: Consciousness is a higher order perceptual process (must perceive the perception)

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

a priori knowledge (from the beginning)

knowledge that is independent of sense-perception

Critique of Pure Reason

a priori knowledge: that knowledge which is independent of all experience & structures it

Space, Time, Causality

No direct, objective observation of the mind

objects of experience are mere “appearances”

the nature of things as they are in themselves is consequently unknowable to us

No chance for psychology to be a true science

Rationalist Responses to Empiricism

Journal

Contemporary Issues:
Historical Framework of Contemporary Psychology

Unit 3

The Scientific Context

Science in the Age of Enlightenment

Enlightenment:1650s -1780s (Western Europe)

emphasized reason, analysis & individualism vs. traditional lines of authority.

Science can “shed light” on dark corners of human ignorance

Science can yield “objective truth”

Scientists are unbiased

Progress is something to be valued

Isaac Newton (1643-1727)

physicist, mathematician, & greatest scientist of his era

Cambridge Univ: mathematics, optics, physics & astronomy

fellow of Trinity College; Lucasian professor of mathematics (1669)

Ordination not required. Stephen Hawkins recently held this post

fellow of the Royal Society (1672); President 1703-death

Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687) Mechanics & Gravity

also published in history, theology and alchemy.

‘The Opticks’ (1704) – fundamental nature of light

Functioning of the Nervous System

Early Knowledge of CNS

Pre 1600s:

Neuroanatomy: da Vinci, Galen, & others

thought brain is organ for purification & refinement of animal spirits

typically studied poorly preserved brains (degraded into the formless mass)

Sir Christopher Wren (artist) developed preservation techniques

Thomas Willis (B. Med – Oxford, 1646)

Practicing Physician

Returned as Professor of Natural Philosophy, 1660

Focus: neuroanatomy of Brain (1664 Cerebri Anatome)

Moved to London to practice (at request of Archbishop of Canterbury)

Became wealthy, lots of pro-bono work

Thomas Willis (1621-1675)

Neuroanatomists

Cerebri Anatome (1664) (Anatomy of the Brain)

Circle of Willis

basic neuroanatomy, anatomical nomenclature, & comparative neuroanatomy

Coined important terms

Reflex

Neurology

Cranial Nerve #

Founder of Clinical Neuroscience

Longitudinal studies in his patients

dissecting and studying them after their death

would relate altered behavior he observed during their life to neurological deficits and deformities discovered during autopsy

Functioning of the Nervous System

Reflex Action

Robert Whytt (1714-1766)

Studied Art & then Medicine

Prof: theory of medicine at Edinburgh

Physiology: voluntary and involuntary activity of nervous system

spinal nerves in involuntary responses to stimuli

set the scene for the study of reflexes in the nineteenth century

Stimulated frog legs

If spinal cord separated from brain  reflex occurred

If nerve disconnected from spinal cord  no reflex

Therefore, spinal cord necessary for reflexes

Voluntary (requires brain) vs. involuntary (only requires spinal cord) actions

Habit formation: starts as voluntary, becomes more involuntary

Later, William James spoke of this

Reflex implies existence of a sensory component and a motor component

Bell-Magendie Law

Spinal Nerves

Orig: nerve fibers indiscriminate re: sensory/motor function

dorsal roots (#12)  afferent/sensory fibers

if cut, movement but no sensation in corresponding limb

ventral roots (#11)  efferent/motor fibers

if cut, sensation but no movement in corresponding limb

Naming Controversy

1811 Bell reported motor function ventral roots; did not mention sensory functions of the dorsal roots (due to method of dissection, he was an anatomist)

A dead, or rendered unconscious, animal would not register pain

11 years later, Magendie (a physiologist) reported motor neuron fibers exit the anterior root and the sensory neuron fibers from the dorsal root

NOTE: also national rivalry – English (Bell) vs French

Specific Nerve Energies

Johannes Peter Müller (1835)

(Bell had done some of this; Locke & others implied this)

perception is defined by the pathway over which the sensory information is carried.

(Eye Press Demo)

attributed the quality of an experience to some specific quality of the energy in the nerves

1912: Edgar Adrian showed all neurons carry the same electrical energy (i.e., action potentials)

1945, Roger Sperry showed that location in the brain to which nerves attach determines experience (Nobel 1981)

Sperry: Nobel for Split-Brain work at CalTech
(tidbit: Sperry was denied tenure at U Chicago)

KEY: We do not perceive the world directly, we perceive the action of our nervous system

After Müller, the two problems of mind and body, the relationship of mind to brain and nervous system and the relationship of mind to world were inextricably linked. Although Müller did not himself explore the implications of his doctrine for the possibility that the ultimate correlates of sensory qualities might lie in specialized centers of the cerebral cortex or develop a sensory psychophysics, his principle of specificity lay the groundwork for the eventual localization of cortical function and his view of the epistemological function of the nervous system helped define the context within which techniques for the quantitative measurement of the mind/world relationship emerged in Fechner’s psychophysics

Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894)

10 interest was Science

couldn’t afford Univ; studied medicine on military grant

1849 Prof of (anatomy &) Physiology

Wilhelm Wundt was his assistant (1858-1863)

Studied Human Eye

1851 invented the ophthalmoscope

Young-Helmholtz trichromatic color vision theory

Studied Human Ear

Pitch & Tone (he was a musician)

1852 Speed of Neural Impulse (1/10 speed of sound)

Stim frog’s nerve: 1st near a muscle, then farther away;

when the stimulus was farther from the muscle, it contracted just a little slower

1870 Changed focus – Prof of Physics

Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand
von Helmholtz

Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate practical utility, may generally rest assured that he will seek in vain.

(All that science can achieve is a perfect knowledge and a perfect understanding of the action of natural forces.)

Herman von Helmholt Academic Discourse, Heidelberg (1862)

Hermann Helmholtz (cont)

Advocated a strongly materialist philosophy

All life reduces to physical and chemical processes

Opposed the vitalism of his mentor (Müller)

Speed of the neural impulse

Assumed speed too fast to ever be measured

organisms powered by innate “vital force” rather than energy

1791 Galvani demonstrated electrical properties

Relative slowness demonstrated that physical/chemical processes involved

Would later provide the basis for the development of reaction time methodology

Helmholtz: Sensory Physiology

Research on Vision

Trichromatic theory (Young-Helmholtz)

Receptors for three primary colors

red, green, blue/violet

Other colors involved combinations of receptors

Retinal level

Opponent Process theory (Hering) applies later in the visual pathway (LGN)

Opponent process cells (R-G, B-Y, B-W)

Research on Hearing

Resonance theory / Place theory

Different frequencies detected by receptors in different locations on the cochlea

Helmholtz
The Problem Of Perception

Remarkable capabilities to perceive

Yet poor optics

Poor quality info on space, distance, motion, etc.

Unconscious inference

Based on experience

e.g., person approaches us – we infer that they are getting closer, not bigger (we have learned that people don’t grow that fast)

Consistent with specific energies doctrine (Muller)

Congenial to British Empiricist thinking (Locke)

Honors

– 1873, elected member of the American Philosophical Society.

– 1881, elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.

– 1881, awarded the Légion d’honneur: au grade de Commandeur, or Level 3 – a senior grade.

– 1883, Emperor, raised to the nobility, or Adel – now styled: von Helmholtz. The distinction was not a peerage or title, but conferred a certain social cachet.

– 1884, Honorary Member of Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland

Localization of Brain Function

Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828)

Studied Medicine: neuroanatomist & physiologist

study of the localization of mental functions in the brain

1800 Craniometry; later called Phrenology

First serious localization theory

collected human and animal skulls and made wax molds of brains

relations between head shape & personality or ability

Basic principles of phrenology

Brain is the organ of the mind

Mind composed of a number of “faculties”

Intellectual, affective (emotional), personality

Each faculty located in a specific place on the cortex**

Strength of a faculty reflected in proportional brain size

Doctrine of the skull (skull reflects brain contour)

Enables measurement of faculties by measuring skulls

Discovered diff grey (neuron) vs. white (axons) matter

Phrenology – Little Scientific Acceptance

Rejected in Austria & France

Relied too much on anecdotal evidence

Avoided falsification

Apparent disproof explained away

Adopted by quacks & frauds

Popular in England & U.S. (1820s-1850s)

Eng. Used to justify inferiority of colonies

US slavery

Johann Spurzheim influence

biological explanation of mental processes

Big business

Fowler & Wells: social reformers,

publishers, lecturers

Lavery’s “psychograph”

Phrenology –Scientific Disproof

Pierre Flourens (1794-1867)

Physician: ablation & stimulation

Cortex, Cerebellum & Vestib system

Direct attack on phrenology

brain acts as functional entity (integrated whole)

although specific functions are controlled by specifics parts of the brain

Destroy some portion of brain

Make inferences based on the outcome

Specific locations had functions different from those proposed by phrenologists

e.g., cerebellum (motor coordination, not “amativeness”/sexual attraction)

Clinical Localization of Brain Function
Case of Phineas Gage (1848)

Phineas P. Gage

American railroad construction foreman

large iron rod driven completely through head

destroying much of his brain’s left frontal lobe

“entered on the [left] side of his face… passing back of the left eye, and out at the top of the head.

personality and behavior changes

friends saw him as “no longer Gage”

frontal lobe damage altered rational control over emotions

1st case: damage to specific parts of the brain might affect personality

Clinical Localization of Brain Function
Case of “Tan”

Broca’s (motor) aphasia

Louis Leborgne lost the ability to speak at 30 yo

Admitted to Paris Hospital – could only say “Tan”

No other cog or language defects

21 yrs later (1861), autopsy of brain:

large lesion in the frontal area

posterior inferior frontal gyrus (Brodmann’s 44 & 45)

Lelong: 84-year-old being treated for dementia

Could only speak 5 words

autopsy showed similar brain lesion

Speech Function Was Localized

specific functional areas

Phrenologists had good insight

“Scientific Phrenology”

Electrical stimulation of the cortex

Fritsch (1860):

Military Hospital, Open Skull Injury, Elect Stim of Brain

Rear of brain  eye movements

Fritsch joined Hitzig (1870)

German neurologist and neuropsychiatrist

Stim dogs  specific body movements

Note: Univ wouldn’t allow so did at Fritsch’s home

Identified motor centers in the cortex

John Jackson – electrical discharge & epilepsy

David Ferrier (1873): electrical stim & ablation

Identified sensory and motor areas in primate cortex

Functions of the Brain (1876)

Wilder Penfield (1940): operating on epileptics

Mapped out motor cortex in human

London Times, Friday, March 25, 1887

The Neuron & Behavior

Camillo Golgi (1844-1926)

Fixation & Staining procedures very poor in 1872: while an attending at hospital, developed staining techniques (Golgi stain) (published in 1875)

Visualize nerve cell body & all processes

Believed physically connected (stain crossed synapse)

Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934)

Believed they were adjacent but not physically connected

1906 Nobel Prize  shared by Golgi & Ramón y Cajal

Sir Charles Sherrington (1857-1952)

Integrative Action of the Nervous System (1906)

Synapse must exist

RT of reflexes slower than expected from known neuron speeds

Temporal summation

Spatial summation

Nobel in 1921

Journal

Contemporary Issues:
Historical Framework of Contemporary Psychology

Unit 4

Wundt & German Psychology

Wissenschaft

19th century Germany Higher Education Model

von Humboldt, U of Berlin 1809

Prior (11-13th) lectures by prominent scholar

Some research (e.g., Newton – but on own time)

Scholarship via ‘learned societies’ e.g., Royal Society of London

Systematic Research/Scholarship

science, learning, knowledge, & scholarship

dynamic process discoverable for oneself

rather than something that is handed down

Emphasis on research & research-based degrees

In USA

Johns Hopkins University (1876), 1st Amer Research Univ

Clark U (1889), Stanford U (1891), U of Chicago (1892)

Experimental Psychology: Psychophysics

Johann Herbart (1776-1833)

(Kant: science of psychology is impossible)

NOTE: BORN 1776

Psychology was mathematical, empirical, scientific

e.g., assign diff weights to ideas of diff importance

ignored biology & experimentation

Apperceptive mass (remember Leibniz)

Integrated cluster of ideas at the forefront of Consciousness

Unrelated ideas “repressed”; dropped into Unconscious

Threshold/Limen:

limit below which an idea will be out of consciousness, and conversely, in consciousness when above it.

Ernst Weber (1795-1878)

Physiologist at Leipzig (Wundt here later)

Interest in Touch (TPK)

Research on two-point thresholds

Mapping skin sensitivity

Absolute Threshold: detect stim 50% of time

Difference Threshold

Weber’s Law:

jnd = just noticeable difference between weights

e.g., 30g & 33g are JND (10%)

THEN 60g & 63g will not be noticeably different

must be 60g and 66g

Gustav Fechner (1801-1889)

Biologist, Prof of Physics at Leipzig (1834)

1839 Eye injury; withdrew for 3 years

Meditations: everything is endowed with a soul

1850: Nanna, oder Über das Seelenleben der Pflanzen

nothing is without a material basis

mind and matter are the same essence

Psychophysics

What changes in our psychological perception of X as some characteristic, Y, of the physical world changes.

Relationship between physical stimulus & psychological experience of it

e.g., How does perception of color change as frequency of light changes

Could now conduct experiments on MIND

New Psychology at Leipzig

Before Fechner only physiological psychology and philosophical psychology.

Fechner’s experimental method began a whole new wave in psychology, which became the basis for modern experimental psychology.

Wundt: the study of consciousness was best done through newly emerging sciences including Fechner’s Psychophysics.

only this scientific approach would allow understanding of the “complex products of the unconscious mind.”

Fechner: Elements of Psychophysics (1860)

Methods for determining thresholds

Limits (find threshold by + or – staircase)

Constant stimuli (find threshold by + or – random presentation)

Adjustment (Sub control)

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)

Johannes Müller & Hermann Helmholtz @ Heidelberg

Principles of Physiological Psychology (1873-4)

the first comprehensive handbook of modern experimental psychology

Preface  “a new domain of science”

sensory psychophysics, brain localization, etc.

Went to Leipzig in Philosophy: 1875

Experimentation on Consciousness (not behavior)

Lab  1879 (RT studies; introspection)

1st Psych Journal  1881 (Philosophische Studien)

Wundt’s New Psychology: 2 Branches

Immediate Conscious Experience

Investigated in the laboratory

Use of “internal perception” (introspection)

Psychophysics

Völkerpsychologie (Cf: more recent Hx interest)

“language, art, myth, and customs…”

Investigated outside of the lab

Social Science: Observation, case study, etc.

Inside Wundt’s lab

Sensation & perception

Psychophysics

Mental chronometry

Reaction time for simple vs complex stim

Mental Chronometry

F. C. Donders (Ophthalmol., Optom., Neuroimaginig, etc)

Q: are mental processes measurable?

A: “An important factor seemed to be susceptible to measurement: I refer to the time required for simple mental processes” (Donders, 1868).

SRT = simple reaction time (percept + motor)

See White, hit key

DRT = discrimination reaction time

See White OR Red, Only hit key for white

DRT = SRT + discrimination time

CRT = choice reaction time

See White or Red, Hit W key for White, R key for Red

CRT = SRT + DRT + choice time

Problem: assumption of additivity

Wundt’s New Psychology
(more recent findings)

Changing conceptions of Wundt

Old: structuralist, goal is analysis, the lab is all that matters

New: voluntarism (effort of the will), active mind, apperception, Völkerpsycologie, lab is important (among other things)

NOTE: Need To Continue To Do History

Old view  believed by Titchener, promoted by Boring’s history text

New view  outcome of renewed interest in history and the development of cognitive psychology

i.e., revision of Wundt would not have occurred prior to the context of renewed interest in cognition in 1970s

The New Psychology Spreads

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)

University of Bonn Ph.D. 1873

Read Elemente der Psychophysik in London

Memory. A Contribution to Experimental Psychology 1885

Univ of Berlin (3rd lab after Wundt & GE Muller in Göttingen)

study formation of original associations

Stim: Nonsense syllable (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant)

no pre-existing associations

Learning: learning to criterion

Retention: Orig Learning vs. repetitions required to relearn

Avoid issues of conscious recall

N=1, year long experiment, replicated

Ebbinghaus (continued)

Set high standards for experimental control

Highly quantitative treatment of data

Findings:

shape of the learning curve

time required to memorize an average nonsense syllable increases sharply as the number of syllables increases

distributing learning trials over time better than massing practice into a single session

continuing to practice material after the learning criterion has been reached enhances retention

primacy and recency effects

Early finding of what later came to be called STM capacity

Max CVCs repeated accurately after just one reading = 7

The time course of forgetting (from 20 min – 30 days later)

forgotten very rapidly at first; then forgetting levels out and whatever information is left after the initial memory decay tends to stay in memory

Georg Elias Müller (1850-1934)

Studies psychophysics w/Fechner; PhD (1873) from Göttingen w/Rudolf Herman Lotze (Fechner student, MD & Philosopher)

Scientific Method – Halt

limitations of Ebbinghaus’ work

E used himself as both subject and experimenter

could see other syllables above and below target

imprecise exposure to each syllable with metronome

Memory Drum

Rotating Drum (kymograph) used to present list

rotation was timed and would be constant

screen with slot limited view to only one item at a time

a stepping action held item still for a fixed amount of time

Introspection

Memory entails complex processes

Consciousness strategies

Inhibition (Retroactive & Proactive)

Georg Elias Müller (1850-1934)

Grouping / Chunking

Rückle, a mathematics PhD student at Göttingen, was a memory prodigy.

Consolidation

How many trials needed to learn the nonsense syllables

Quantified by percentage correct

Retroactive Interference (Most Known for This)

Nonsense Syllables for 6 minutes

Exp: View & Describe landscape paintings

Cont: No Distractors

Recall List

Cont > Exp groups on # of items recalled from list

Journal

Contemporary Issues:
Historical Framework of Contemporary Psychology

Unit 5

Darwin’s Century: Evolutionary Thinking

The Species Problem

pre-Darwin: species are invariable

Genesis:

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

“Mystery of Mysteries”

How do new species originate

What accounts for the large number, the diversity, the occasional disappearance, the existence of fossils, etc.?

The Species Problem

Big problem for academics in Great Britain

‘Natural Theology’: Profs also members of the clergy

“There is for a free man no occupation more worthy and delightful than to contemplate the beauteous works of nature and honour the infinite wisdom and goodness of God.”

John Ray, parson-naturalist

William Paley (1802) the argument from design

Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity.

The Watchmaker Analogy:

Elegant design requires a designer (i.e., God)

The Watchmaker Analogy

“In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. … There must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed [the watch] for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use … Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.”

Early Evolutionary Ideas

Jean Baptiste de Lamarck (naturalist)

Evolution by inheritance: (Theory of Use & Disuse)

physiological needs created by interactions with environment cause biological structures to enlarge or shrink

all such changes were heritable

Diff from C. Darwin but still:

1) adaptive change in lineages

2) ultimately driven by environmental change

3) over long periods of time

Erasmus Darwin: Charles Darwin’s grandfather

physician, philosopher, poet, botanist, naturalist

Zoonomia, or, The Laws of Organic Life (1794)

“…that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which the great first cause endued with animality…and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down those improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end?… “

Charles Darwin & Voyage of the Beagle

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

Cambridge: Henslow (bio) & Sedgewick (geology)

Voyage of the Beagle to S. Amer (1831-36)

Galapagos Islands, 500 miles west of S. America

Newly formed volcanic island

Henslow recommended him as self-funded naturalist

Darwin was 22 and just finished his degree to become a parson

Ship’s Surgeon was ‘official’ naturalist

Emphasis on geology (zoology notes ¼ of geology notes)

Supported Lyell’s “uniformitarian” views of geology

Natural processes that operate now have always operated in the past and apply everywhere in the universe

Lyell suggested fossils found in rocks were actually evidence of animals that had lived many thousands or millions of years ago

Darwin’s Finches
the ‘classic story’

Finches on Galapagos Islands

variety of finches

vary in the shape and size of their beaks

Single breed of finches colonized Galapagos & then diverged in form.

distance between the islands prevented interbreeding

distinct populations on different island

Different populations specialized for different food sources

birds with thin, sharp beaks eating insects

birds with large, sturdy beaks eating nuts

Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution

Huge specimen collection sent back to Cambridge

Darwin’s Finches

Collected many species of birds

Failed to note which island they came from

Reconstructed from other’s notes

In London, told that different birds were all finches that looked different from one another.

“I have strong reasons to suspect that some of the species of the sub-group Geospiza are confined to separate islands. If the different islands have their representatives of Geospiza, it may help to explain the singularly large number of the species of this sub-group in this one small archipelago, and as a probable consequence of their numbers, the perfectly graduated series in the size of their beaks. (pp403-420)”

Darwin’s Theory Evolves

An Essay on the Principle of Population, 1798 Thomas Robert Malthus.

Population grows faster than food supply

Produces a “struggle for existence”

Nature selects from variants to create perfect structure

Selective Breeding (artificial selection)

Sought out info from plant & animal cross-breeders

Focused on pigeon breeding

All domestic pigeons likely descended from rock pigeon

Artificial selection implies an analogy to nature

i.e., “natural selection”

On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,
or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

Charles Darwin

24 November 1859

http://darwin-online.org.uk/contents.html#origin

The Delay

could have published theory of evolution in early 1840s

Had been working on since late 1830

Health (his & family)

Concern about Vestiges of Creation (1844)

a quasi-scientific book supporting evolution

Rejected by scientific community

Scientific Conservatism

Working-class reform movement

Most scientists were upper-class landowners

nervous and wary of progressive-sounding theories

collecting supporting data & recruiting supporters

including Alfred Wallace

Ended with the Wallace letter (1858)

Alfred Russel Wallace (1923-1913)
Theory Of Evolution Through Natural Selection

Younger biologist / naturalist; biogeography

Also studies Thomas Malthus

Corresponded with D (1857…); D knew his work

On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type (6/1958)

Requested Darwin review & pass it on to Charles Lyell

outlined mechanics of an evolutionary divergence of species due to environmental pressures

D sent to Lyell – L put together with some of D’s writings & published (little notice)

On the Origin of Species 1959

Darwin’s Theory of Evolution

Natural Selection is the Key

Spontaneous Individual Variation

Some variations “favorable”

Increase survival long enough to reproduce

These variations “selected” by nature & passed on

i.e., natural selection

VERY LONG timeline

Note: survival of the best adapted (not the ‘fittest’)

Note: species not individual

Cf: ‘find food, don’t be food’

The Oxford Debates (1860 Brit AAS)

Bishop Wilberforce

A member of House of Lords & Royal Society (No Dope!!)

Darwin’s not supported by the fact

greatest names in science were opposed to the theory

‘Humans did not descend from apes’

Thomas Huxley  ‘Darwin’s bulldog’

Self taught/apprenticed anatomist

Coined term Agnostic

‘professional scientists’ rather than clergy & amateurs

W: asked Huxley if he descended from an ape on his mother’s side or his father’s side

H: he would rather be descended from an ape than a man who misused his great talents to suppress debate

Scientific acceptance

By decade’s end, most agreed that evolution occurred

BUT only a minority supported natural selection

Darwin & Psychology

‘In the distant future I see open fields for more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation.’

Comparative Psychology

Humans & animals descended from common ancestor

Functionalism: Chapters 7 and 8

Individual Differences

Pre-D: averages & similarities

Post-D: what human traits make some more successful than others

Evolutionary Psychology: modern evocation

Support for bio explanation of psych concepts

The Origins of Comparative Psychology

Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals Darwin (1872): 3 Principles

Expressions: important communicative function

Serviceable Habits

emotion expressions are evolved and adaptive

raising eyebrows: increase VF

Sneer: snowing canine teeth; threat

Antithesis

the exact opposite signals to convey the exact opposite emotion (vs Serviceable Habits)

Shrug is opposite of aggressive stance

Direct Action of the Excited Nervous System on the Body

nervous system needs to discharge excess excitement

Douglas Spalding (1840-1877)

Instinct (Argued against British Empiricist view )

Imprinting; Critical period

George Romanes (1848-1894)

“founder” of comparative psychology

Friend of Darwin; access to his notes

animal behavior in evolutionary context

Animal Intelligence (1882)

anecdotal data; Journalism criterion; overly anthropomorphic

C. Lloyd Morgan (1852-1936)

Introduction to Comparative Psychology (1894)

Lloyd Morgan’s Canon (B.F.Skinner used)

“In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of one which stands lower in the psychological scale.”

Law of Parsimony (Occam’s razor)

Cf: Don’t take loans on intelligence

Individual Differences
Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911)

Charles Darwin’s Cousin (had access to raw data)

apply evolutionary thinking to the question of intelligence

Issue: regression to mean – how could evolution occur?

1st to note importance of individuals differences

Studying variations in human ability

Hereditary Genius (1869) (http://galton.org/books/hereditary-genius/)

Success due to superior qualities passed through heredity

Eminence rates

Surveys and twin studies

Conclusion: intelligence/ability/eminence was inherited

Galton eventually rejected; other factors involved in success

Implications: Eugenics (Galton coined term)

forbid reproduction of “degenerate” and “unfit” people

Need for accurate measurements

Galton (Methodological Contrib.)

Statistical investigation of data needed Large Sample

psychometrics

Anthropometric lab

International Health Exhibition held in London in 1885

Measurements based on

Physical measures & Sensory/motor capacity

Related through “correlations”

Some Other Contributions:

Correlation

mental imagery tests

percentiles

questionnaires

regression

scatterplots

twin studies

word association tests

Journal

Contemporary Issues:
Historical Framework of Contemporary Psychology

Unit 6

American Pioneers

Psychology in 19th-CenturyAmerica

Faculty Psychology

Based on Scottish realist philosophy

Mind, separate from body, composed of a set of “faculties”

Innate, but influenced by nurture/environment

Thomas Upham’s Mental Philosophy

Faculties divided into three broad categories

The intellect (cognitive)

The sensibilities (emotion)

The will (actions, behavior)

Education: strengthen intellect to control will & emotions

Through drill and repetition (younger)

Older: abstract subjects such as classical philosophy, literature, and languages, as well as advanced mathematics to ‘sharpen the mind’

Edward Thorndike discredited this

Thorndike’s Connectionism replaced (S-R ‘habits’)

Thorndike’s Cats (S-R)

Edward Thorndike discredited Faculty Psychology

Ph.D. 1898 PhD at Columbia University

Most of his career at Teacher College of Columbia

Animal intelligence (Thorndike, 1898) Connectionism (S-R ‘habits’)

Learning is forming associations or bonds

“the connection of a certain act with a certain situation and resultant pleasure”

“the beginning of an exact estimate of just what associations, simple and compound, an animal can form, how quickly he forms them, and how long he retains them”

Thorndike’s Cats – Puzzle Box

Learning Curve

Thorndike’s Cats: Law Of Effect

Behavior governed by its consequences

initial success determined by chance

Steady strength of correct response & corresponding strength of various incorrect responses

The “Modern” American University
Post Civil War

Morrill Act (1862)

Land Grant Universities

Public Institutions

Agricultural Research

educate both men & women in practical fields of study, though women’s courses were still centered around home economics

Graduate Education in Private Institutions

No longer just religious or ‘finishing’ schools

e.g., Harvard

The Research University (German Model)

Johns Hopkins (1876)

Clark (1887)

Stanford (1891)

U. Chicago (1891)

The “Modern” American University
Education for Women

Pre-Civil War:

Mostly institutes or seminaries

Salem College (1766) became Moravians College 1890

oldest women’s college re: founding date

Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (1837) – MH College (1888)

Few co-ed Colleges (about 5)

Oberlin College (1833) 1st accept Women & African Americans

“Women’s sphere” created obstacles

Alleged health consequences of too much cognitive effort

Several private women’s colleges opened

Vassar (1865), Smith (1871), Wellesley (1875), Bryn Mawr (1885)

Mt Holyoke was model for many

1894: Margaret Washburn – 1st (women) Psych PhD

Cornell University with E. B. Titchener

The Animal Mind: A Textbook of Comparative Psychology, 1908

The Animal Mind (1908)

A Textbook of Comparative Psychology.

compiled research on exper work in animal psychology

covered a range of mental activities: S&P, Consciousness & Cognition, as well as behavior.

Covered more than 100 species. Entire chapter on amoeba

Intro chaps on methods

Opposed behaviorism & dismissal of Conscious

animal consciousness is not qualitatively different from human mental life.

Consciousness exists in animals “… of structure resembling ours which rapidly adapt themselves to the lessons of experience. Beyond this point, for all we know, it may exist in simpler and simpler forms until we reach the very lowest of living beings.”

Separate but equal doctrine

Segregated education (& other things) OK as long as that provided to each “race” was equal.

extended to the public schools in 1899 by SCOTUS

Segregated schools needed black teachers.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Few pre-War (1837); most post-war; mainly in the South

Teacher Training; Little Psychology

Francis Sumner (1895-1954)

First African-American PhD

Clark; PhD, 1920, “Psychoanalysis of Freud & Adler”

Established Howard U psychology program

The “Modern” American University
Education for Racial Minorities

Kenneth and Mamie Phipps Clark (PhD Columbia)

1940 & 1944 respectively

Met @ Howard where they studied with Sumner

Doll study (B&W dolls; Pref & Characteristics) 1939-40

Originated in Mamie’s MA work @ Howard

black children seemed to prefer white dolls to black ones (that are otherwise =)

“prejudice, discrimination, and segregation” created feeling of inferiority among African-American children & damaged their self-esteem.

cited in Brown v. Board of Education (Warren, 1954)

“separate educational facilities are inherently unequal”

The “Modern” American University
Education for Racial Minorities

William James (1842-1910)
America’s First “New” Psychologist

Born in NYC; Family moved to Europe 1855-8

studied painting & science

Brother: Henry James (author)

Harvard MD in 1869 (never practices)

troubled about materialist philosophy

Discovers Renouvier (post-Kantian) and free will

‘… the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts’

Pragmatism  ideas have value in terms of their functional capacity

1873 – begins teaching at Harvard

1875 – first psychology course (with demo lab)

Travels to Europe (1882)

Meets with Hering, Stumpf, Mach, Wundt, Charcot & others

William James
The Principles of Psychology (1890)

1200 pages of physiology, psychology, philosophy

12 years to write

“a loathsome, distended, tumefied*, bloated, dropsical mass, … that there is no such thing as a science of psychology…” *swollen

Psychology’s most famous book

contains seeds of pragmatism and phenomenology

Note: Pragmatism was forerunner of Functionalism

Pragmatism: thought is a product of the interaction between organism and environment

vs: thought describes, represent, or mirror reality

William James
The Principles of Psychology (1890)

Primary method  “introspection”

General reflection: not as rigid as Wundt or Titchener

“the looking into our own minds and reporting what we there discover”

Skeptical about the new laboratory psychology methods (psychophysics, reaction time)

Called them “brass instrument psychology”

Used a diversity of methods, including Comparative

Not interested in questionnaires, however

“among the common pests of life”

The Principles of Psychology
On Consciousness & Habit

Stream metaphor

vs. analytic strategy of succession of “ideas”

Continuously changing

Sensibly continuous

Selective: attention creates “things” from “qualities”

Function of Consciousness

focus on & solve problems

environmental adaptation

Function of Habit

“any sequence of mental action which has been frequently repeated, tends to perpetuate itself …”

decrease attention needed for actions

frees cognitive capacity so that important problems can be in the focus of consciousness

The Principles of Psychology
On Emotions & Will

James-Lange theory of Emotions

emotion follows, rather than causes, its bodily expression

e,g., we feel sad BECAUSE we cry

Implication  simulate bodily changes, and emotion associated with those changes will occur

Problem  requires unique pattern of physiological arousal for each strong emotion

Will

Wundt: one special feeling — a “feeling of innervation”

James: some do, some don’t

e.g., mindless snacking while talking after dinner – no “feeling …”

James’s Later Years
Religion and Philosophy

The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

neglect of science in the study of religion

“the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine”

chapter on “Mysticism”

Became interested in spiritualism

1855: Established Amer Soc for Psychical Research

Controversial: peers thought it hurt the reputation of psychology as science

James thought it was important to keep an open mind and look for evidence one way or the other

Pragmatism (1907)
William James

middle ground between 2 mainstream approaches of European philosophy

rationalistic, intellectualistic, religious, dogmatic

empirical, sensations, materialistic, irreligious, skeptical

God: all-encompassing Absolute Spirit

practical consequences for a believer:

it would provide us with the optimistic, comforting assurance that everything will work out for the best

BUT: also undermines the values of human individuality, freedom, and responsibility

Truth: Must agree with reality

matters of fact

relations of ideas (e.g., eternal truths of mathematics)

the entire set of other truths to which we are committed.

G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924)
Professionalizing Psychology

Harvard PhD (1878) from James & Bowditch (1st physio lab)

1st Amer PhD in psychology

Prof. of Psych & Pedagogy at JHU

John Dewey & James Cattell were students

Interests in Child Devel & Evolution

1st U. S. lab of experimental psychology (1883)

1st U. S. journal to publish research in psychology

American Journal of Psychology (1887)

Named first President of Clark University (1887)

Opened 1889 – first stand-alone graduate school (no UG) in U. S.

Followed German Research Univ model

1892 1st president of APA

James Cattell:

1st Prof of Psych (U Penn)

Intelligence; Statistics – The Psychological Corporation

(Anti draft in early 1900’s – Fired from Columbia 1917 for this)

John Dewey: Pragmatism; Functionalism

Psychology at Clark

Clark 1st stand alone Grad School (no UG)

Monday evening seminars (run by Hall)

Diversity of interests

Common theme – Evolution & Genetic psychology

Recapitulation as a biological model

Individual development mirrors evolution

Hall Invents Adolescence

Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion, and Education. (1904).

Post Civil War: new machines replaced the work children did earlier

The 1909 Clark conference 

Interested in Freud’s Work

Psychology at Clark

The Clark lab  Edmund Sanford as director

“Brass Instruments” (a); voice reaction time (b)

Included comparative psychology

Small’s Learning Mazes

Mary Whiton Calkins (1863-1930)
Challenging the Male Monopoly

Graduates Smith; Teaches Greek @ Wellesley, 1887

offered Prof in Psych if she would learn Psych

Difficult search for graduate education

Germany, Michigan, Yale –warned off by females there

A “guest” at Harvard with W. James (1890)

Some laboratory training with Sanford at Clark

Returns to Wellesley & sets up Psych Lab

Münsterberg visits Harvard, ‘guest’ in his lab (1892)

Paired-associates learning

Münsterberg requests she be granted PhD – denied (1895)

Offered PhD from Radcliff in 1902 – SHE refused

Like James (her mentor), shifted interests to philosophy

Self psychology ”…the person or organism which is conscious, which experiences, which functions, which drives or is driven.”

First woman President of APA

elected 1905; 14th President

Journal

Journal
Entry #2 (450–500 words):

In your journal entry,
answer the following questions:

Learning and Experiences

Reflect on the 3 most
challenging patient encounters and discuss what was most challenging for each.

What
did you learn from this experience?
What
resources did you have available?
What
evidence-based practice did you use for this patient?
What
new skills are you learning?
What
would you do differently?
How
are you managing patient flow and volume?

Communicating
and Feedback

Ask yourself the following
self-reflective questions:

How
might I improve on my skills and knowledge, and how do I communicate that
back to my Preceptor?
How
am I doing? What is missing?
What
type of feedback am I receiving from my Preceptor?

journal

The Health Care Manager
Volume 35, Number 1, pp. 80–89
Copyright # 2016 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.
All rights reserved.

Deciding to Decide
How Decisions Are Made and How Some
Forces Affect the Process

Charles R. McConnell, MBA, CM

There is a decision-making pattern that applies in all situations, large or small, although in small
decisions, the steps are not especially evident. The steps are gathering information, analyzing
information and creating alternatives, selecting and implementing an alternative, and following up
on implementation. The amount of effort applied in any decision situation should be consistent
with the potential consequences of the decision. Essentially, all decisions are subject to certain
limitations or constraints, forces, or circumstances that limit one’s range of choices. Follow-up on
implementation is the phase of decision making most often neglected, yet it is frequently the phase
that determines success or failure. Risk and uncertainty are always present in a decision situation, and
the application of human judgment is always necessary. In addition, there are often emotional forces
at work that can at times unwittingly steer one away from that which is best or most workable under
the circumstances and toward a suboptimal result based largely on the desires of the decision maker.
Key words: constraints, decisions, decision making, emotionalism, risk

LARGE OR SMALL, 1 PATTERN FITS ALL

Most people make a great many decisions
in the course of a typical day. Many decisions,

surely the greatest number of those made in a

day, are small and made very nearly uncon-

sciously. Some decisions are indeed so elemen-

tary in scope and execution that one who might

experience difficulty making them quickly

could be considered troubled in some possibly

serious manner. Occasionally, however, some
of the decisions encountered in a workday are

significant and require considerably more con-

scious effort than the small automatically made

decisions. Some of these more significant de-

cisions can take days and weeks and even

months to finalize. The little decisions are

made as the situations arise with hardly a seri-

ous thought, whereas the significant decisions
receive what often amounts to our complete

attention. Yet little or big, each and every

Author Affiliation: McConnell Editorial Services,

Ontario, New York.

The author has no conflict of interest.

Correspondence: Charles R. McConnell, MBA, CM, 5943

WalworthRoad, Ontario, NY14519 (mclighthouse@juno.com).

DOI: 10.1097/HCM.0000000000000096

decision encompasses all of the elements of

the basic decision-making process.

Those always-present elements of the decision-
making process are the following:

1. Gathering information

2. Analyzing information and arranging it
into alternatives

3. Selecting a preferred alternative (ie,

deciding)

4. Implementing the chosen alternative

5. Following up on implementation

Rather, it should be said that the foregoing

5 elements should always be present. Four of

them are in fact always present, but 1, specif-
ically the final element, following up on im-

plementation, is sometimes overlooked. Small

decision or large decision, however, the first 4

elements are always present. Their presence,

however, may not be especially notable in the

instance of a small decision.

There are essentially 2 factors or forces that

determine the prominence of the steps of the
process of making any particular decision.

One is the amount of experience the decision

maker has had, and thus in part the amount of

‘‘preprogramming’’ that person has experienced,

and the other is the potential consequences of

the decision.

mailto:NY14519(mclighthouse@juno.com

Decision Making and Forces That Affect the Process 81

Consider some simple examples, decisions

a hypothetical individual called Robert could

face today. The first example is the process

Robert goes through in determining what

necktie to wear today. He is familiar with the

clothes he owns and knows how his neckties
match up with his shirts and suits. He is work-

ing with a limited, known, field of information,

making the same general decision he has made

many times previously. His ‘‘information’’ is

what he knows of his ties and other clothes,

and his alternatives are the matches he can

possibly consider, all or most of which he has

considered previously. Choosing means pick-
ing 1 of the combinations, implementing is tying

the necktie in place, and perhaps even follow-up

on implementation is present as he glances in

the mirror to check the knot. This is a decision

made readily because Robert is so well experi-

enced at it that he is preprogrammed.

The second major force in determining the

prominence of the steps in the process is the
potential consequences of an incorrect deci-

sion. In the foregoing necktie example, the

potential consequences are negligible. If Robert

has made a poor choice, someone he encoun-

ters that day might think, probably off-handedly

or fleetingly, that he had poor taste in ties or

that he did not match up his outfit very well.

Hardly consequences of lasting or major impact
(unless, of course, Robert happens to be inter-

viewing today for an executive position with a

men’s clothing manufacturer, a circumstance

suggesting that potential consequences often

hinge, in part, on the total decision context and

not just on economics).

Take the necktie decision up a level, how-

ever, and consider that Robert has gone into a
store to purchase a new tie. This is an entirely

new situation. Unless Robert buys neckties far

more often than most men do, he will not

have nearly as much experience with this kind

of decision. Therefore, he has far less informa-

tion about his field of choices. There are dozens

or perhaps hundreds of neckties available, and

his ability to select 1 or more consistent with his
wardrobe is somewhat hampered by the fact the

except for what he is wearing, his wardrobe is at

home. Less experience translates to little or no

preprogramming, requiring Robert to ponder

more. Then there is the matter of potential con-

sequences. If he simply chose the wrong tie to

wear today, he might look a bit foolish or out of

place or he may suffer no consequences at all.

But if he makes an improper decision by pur-

chasing a necktie that turns out to be inappro-
priate for him, then he is out perhaps $20 or $30

or more.

Consider, then, decisions for Robert of

progressive importance—buying a new suit,

selecting a new automobile, or even buying a

home. At each succeeding level, chances are

he has had less and less experience with the

kind of decision he is facing, and at each
succeeding level, the potential consequences

loom larger and larger. Thus, the forces of

experience (rather, lack thereof) and potential

consequences affect the amount of effort that

goes into a particular decision. More experi-

ence, quicker decision—which is why the lit-

tle matters that are decided every day seem to

be decided automatically. And the greater the
potential consequences are, the greater the

thought and deliberation going into the deci-

sion. Or this generally should be the case, for

with what confidence would the staff go

forth if their chief executive officer made a snap

decision to launch a new, expensive program

without thoroughly examining the idea?

Essentially by definition, the first 4 elements
of the decision-making process are always

present. The first 2, gathering information

and forming alternatives, may be invisible

because of preprogramming, and the third

and fourth may seem to happen instanta-

neously. And the final step, follow-up on im-

plementation, may not always occur (more on

this later).

GATHERING INFORMATION

In addressing business decisions that may

be faced during the workday, the initial step

is always the gathering of information on which

to base each decision. If a particular decision

requires the solution of a problem, also required
is the appropriate identification of the problem.

The principal task in this phase is to assemble

information that will ultimately suggest the di-

rection of the decision to be made. The principal

82 THE HEALTH CARE MANAGER/JANUARY–MARCH 2016

means of gathering information include re-

search, study, and—especially—observation.

Observations lead to conclusions. However,

1 of the greatest trouble spots in decision mak-

ing exists because of the human tendency to

move from observation to conclusion on lim-
ited information. Never will our information

be perfect. Some decision-making theorists

speak of the concept of perfect information,

the state of knowing everything there is to

know about a specific problem or decision

situation. Perfect information is a theoretical

ideal; it does not exist in the day-to-day world.

If it did exist, there would be no decision to
make because the appropriate alternative

would be self-evident; the decision would

have made itself.

In a practical sense, we can never know

everything about a given situation, but we

should strive to learn enough to guide and

temper our judgment in deciding. In the pro-

cess, we need to remain aware of the weak-
nesses inherent in observation and our human

tendency to infer the presence of things not

present and to discount the importance of

things not seen.

There can be considerable difference be-

tween true observation, that is, effective infor-

mation gathering, and simply ‘‘seeing what is

happening.’’ When we see something, the
image strikes the mind and we immediately

begin to catalog impressions or formulate judg-

ments about what we have seen. However, all

too frequently, we permit ourselves to misinter-

pret what has been placed before us simply

because we have seen rather than observed.

When something is seen, the visual sense is

used essentially automatically and the resulting
mental process is allowed to ‘‘just happen.’’ On

the other hand, when something is truly ob-

served, it is seen but seen with a purpose.

And because seeing is occurring with a pur-

pose, the observer is at least partially protected

against the tendency to automatically accept

surface appearances as pertinent.

Observation is a mental skill that can be
refined and improved through practice. It re-

quires strict attention to what is being observed

and genuine interest in gaining something from

the observation. It is necessary to be selective in

observation, recognizing that no one can effec-

tively observe everything. The intent should be

to observe what is worthwhile, what is perti-

nent to the problem at hand or the decision that

will have to be made.

It is also essential to remain aware that when-
ever information is taken in and reordered and

conveyed to others who will in turn make use

of it, something is lost at every step. Consider

the simple concept of cumulative informa-
1

tion losses :

1. One misses part of what is occurring

upon initial observation;

2. One omits part of what was taken in
when relating the information to another;

3. The person receiving the information

misses part of what is provided by the

original observer; and

4. The receiver of the information in turn

omits part of what was taken in when

passing the information to yet another

or expressing it in another form.
Observation, therefore, including essentially

any and all means of gathering information on

which to base decisions, is always flawed, and

thus, the information acquired is less than com-

plete except in the most elementary of situations.

ANALYZING INFORMATION AND
CREATING ALTERNATIVES

In actual practice, this supposed phase of the

decision-making process will greatly overlap

the preceding phase in which information is

collected. As information accrues, it can logi-

cally be arranged in an appropriate order and

placed in the proper context for evaluation. In

this manner, it is possible to ‘‘fill in the gaps’’
as the decision maker progresses, and this in

fact is what usually occurs. Arranging and cor-

relating data and other information as they

accrue help the decision maker address the

often-present problem of when to stop collecting

information and proceed with deciding.

One of the common failings exhibited by

some persons in decision-making situations,
especially decision makers lacking confidence

or practical experience, is the tendency to

continue collecting information well beyond

the limits of practicality. Often, the timid or

Decision Making and Forces That Affect the Process 83

overcautious decision maker, under the guise

of being thorough and conscientious, will con-

tinue gathering information of diminishing

value. Because a decision maker’s information

is never complete or perfect, there is always

room for asking ‘‘what if?’’ Anyone who has
spent any appreciable time in organizational

life has known a supposed decision maker

who will ‘‘if a problem to death’’ rather than

deciding.

At the opposite extreme from the ‘‘iffer’’ is

the individual who decides compulsively, emo-

tionally, with little or no substantive informa-

tion, going forward on no more than personal
preferences, ‘‘hunches,’’ and ‘‘gut feel,’’ thereby

making what is very often an inappropriate

decision. This extreme is no more tolerable

in a working manager than the extreme rep-

resented by the chronic ‘‘iffer.’’

Overall, the amount of time and effort put

into analyzing information and creating alter-

natives should be consistent with the weight
or potential consequences of the decision. In

other words, it makes little sense to pour a

dollar’s worth of time and effort into prepar-

ing to make a 10-cent decision; far from being

cost effective, this kind of overly cautious

behavior is decidedly counterproductive.

The assembling of information in order—

into evident alternative choices—as it is ac-
crued, when coupled with common-sense

judgment, should be sufficient to tell most

managers when to stop gathering and decide.

SELECTING A PREFERRED
ALTERNATIVE

Upon arriving at this point in the process,

the decision maker may discover that if the

previous steps have been appropriately thor-

ough, the decision may have almost made it-

self. That is, the analysis of alternatives may

have revealed which potential choice is ‘‘best’’

based on the available information. However,

what is the apparent ‘‘best’’ will perhaps have
to tempered with the decision maker’s knowl-

edge of what is possible. It is at this stage that

constraints must enter the picture if they

have not already done so.

CONSTRAINTS: BEYOND THIS BARRIER
YOU SHALL NOT GO

The common constraints, those circumstances

placing either absolute, partial, or practical lim-

itations on the some of the decision alterna-
tives, involve, either singly or in combination,

5 factors or forces: time, money, quality, per-

sonalities, and politics. Some constraints can

be absolute in that they present a firm, immov-

able barrier that cannot be passed. Many con-

straints, however, possess some flexibility in

that there is room for trade-offs in which it is

possible to settle, for instance, for less of 1 char-
acteristic for the sake of obtaining more of an-

other. But whether they are encountered singly

or jointly, the common constraining factors will

ultimately scribe boundaries around every de-

cision situation. The only significant difference

from one situation to another will be how much

freedom exists between the decision and the

boundary.

Time

Many activities that take place in the deliv-

ery of health care must happen in a timely

fashion. Emergency room response time must

be consistent with patient needs, for example,

and the turnaround time of laboratory tests
must be appropriate to the treatment of the

patient. Bills must be paid in sufficient time to

maintain the payer’s credibility and credit

standing. There are any number of activities

that can be made to take place more econom-

ically if it does not matter how long they have

to wait before getting done. However, many

activities simply cannot be pursued in what
might seem the most ‘‘efficient’’ manner be-

cause doing so takes more time than can be

allowed. In one way or another, time will be a

constraint in a great many decision situations.

Money

Money is perhaps the single most encoun-

tered constraint in the decision-making pro-

cess, or at least the constraint of which we

are the most aware and the constraint that is

most easily understood. Money is often an

absolute constraint; you cannot buy a $3000

84 THE HEALTH CARE MANAGER/JANUARY–MARCH 2016

machine if you have only $2500 available, as

Robert of the earlier examples cannot buy a

$30 necktie if he has only $25 with him (and

no credit cards). In business, we understand

financial constraints better than other con-

straints probably because we can relate per-
sonally to the manner in which limitations on

the amount of money available automatically

rule out unaffordable alternatives.

Within its absolute limits, however, money

can be flexible in permitting trade-offs with

other factors. Some activities, for instance,

can be performed in less time using more

costly processes or can be allowed to require
more time using less costly inputs.

Quality

An acceptable level of quality is frequently

a constraining force. The problem, however,

is frequently one of agreeing on what is

‘‘acceptable.’’ Quality is legitimately subject

to frequent 3-way trade-offs with both time
and money, although some predetermined

level of quality will frequently be the determin-

ing factor and will in effect drive the amounts

of time and money involved.

Quality is also the least understood and,

therefore, the most abused of the constraining

factors so far discussed. The ‘‘abuse’’ referred

to is the abuse created by misunderstanding,
reflected in the tendency of many in health care

to treat cost and quality together as though they

were coupled in a direct relationship. That is, to

behave as though quality goes up as expendi-

tures go up and, conversely, quality goes down

when expenditures go down. Behind this,

there has been a long-standing tendency of

many in health care (and elsewhere—the atti-
tude is hardly unique to health care) to believe

that they way something is accomplished at

present is the most efficient way to produce

the desired quality. There follows the belief

that it is not possible to spend less money on

a particular activity without reducing the qual-

ity of its output.

The age-old cost-versus-quality controversy
has gained momentum in recent decades be-

cause of concern over the rising cost of

health care. As concern over escalating costs

translated into pressure to reduce costs, walls

of resistance were encountered among med-

ical professionals and other caregivers who

firmly believe that it is not possible to reduce

cost without adversely affecting quality. As to

whether it is or is not possible to do this, the

answer is: It depends. There is of course an
optimum relationship between cost and qual-

ity for every set of circumstances. The diffi-

culty, however, lies in the near impossibility

of determining this optimum relationship in

many situations. Frequently, however, it is pos-

sible to reduce cost without adversely affecting

quality, and sometimes, it is even possible to

reduce cost while improving quality. At other
times and in other situations, reducing cost

can indeed reduce quality. What is important

to keep in mind about the relationship be-

tween cost and quality is that it is neither di-

rect nor constant.

Personalities and politics

Although often separable and capable of
existing one without the other, these 2 areas

of constraint are discussed jointly for 2 reasons.

First, they are frequently present together—

one having its effect primarily because of the

other; and second, we are inclined to believe

that these are forces or factors that should not

exert influence on business decision making.

We may indeed agree that personalities and
politics should not place constraints on rational

decision making. However, in the real world,

they do just that and refusing to consider them

legitimate is to ignore the reality of their pres-

ence. Political considerations are a fact of life

in many health care organizations. One who

has spent any time at all working in a hospital,

for example, knows the unofficial power and
authority possessed by some medical staff

members. It quickly becomes apparent that the

physician has more clout than the nonphysician

in many instances regardless of placement in

the organizational hierarchy. It becomes equally

apparent that the strong-willed physician—

adding the impact of personality to the poli-

tics of position—can determine the fate of
any potential decision regardless of its indi-

vidual merits.

Thus, personalities and politics become

potential barriers to be reckoned with. These

Decision Making and Forces That Affect the Process 85

sometimes place insurmountable obstacles in

the path, and they always suggest that certain

groups or individuals need to become in-

volved in making many decisions not because

of what they can contribute but because of

who or what they are. It has been proven time
and again that the surest way to guarantee the

opposition of certain individuals or groups is

to exclude them from all deliberations leading

up to a decision. On the other hand, there are

times when inclusion alone paves the way

toward cooperation in the decision-making

process. Of course, inclusion of all potentially

or even remotely involved parties will not en-
sure the acceptance of a particular decision,

and it may be necessary to spend considerable

time working out a solution acceptable to all.

But exclusion of some people because they

are only potentially or remotely involved—or

worse, exclusion of parties who are consid-

ered likely to present obstacles—moves the

situation in the direction of ensuring maximum
opposition to whatever decision is made.

CONSTRAINTS AS ABSOLUTE OR
PRACTICAL

Brief mention was made above of the fre-

quently present ability to make trade-offs be-

tween and among constraints. However, there
are some situations in which certain con-

straints must be considered absolute at a

given level. For example, if the upper limit

placed on a certain capital purchase is $3000,

then only trade-offs involving purchase costs

not exceeding $3000 can be considered. Sim-

ilarly, trade-offs involving quality are possible

only subject to maintaining a level of quality as
measured by some externally imposed stan-

dard. An absolute constraint, therefore, is a

limitation that cannot be exceeded in formu-

lating a decision alternative.

A practical constraint arises from a flexible

characteristic of a decision situation that can

become a restricting factor if flexed beyond

some point. Consider, for example, choosing a
new home. In deciding where to locate your

residence relative to where you work, you

obviously have some trade-off opportunity in-

volving distance. Perhaps you can flex with

the necessity to travel 5, 10, or 20 miles or more

to work, giving on distance to secure more of

what you want in a residence. However, if you

happen to find your dream home at a price you

can afford but it is 150 miles from work, dis-

tance has presented a practical limitation. This
can place you in a position of considering new

decisions—find new employment?—commute

weekends?—or whatever, or it can rule out

the dream-home alternative. This is a practical

constraint.

Overall, constraints delineate the partly

firm and partly flexible boundaries within

which we must operate in every decision sit-
uation. Rarely can we seriously consider all

possible alternatives. Rather, we are limited

in our choices to those alternatives that fall

within the boundaries drawn by the con-

straints of each situation.

IMPLEMENTATION

Implementation is action. It is taking the

chosen alternative and putting it to work,

and it may take a number of different forms.

Implementation may be as simple as initiating

a purchase order and in a few days or weeks,

uncrating a new piece of equipment and turn-

ing it on. On the other hand, it may be as

complex as the design and planning and other
preparation required to realize a building ex-

pansion or establish a new service.

Implementation is also everything. The

wisest, most rational, most well-considered

decision amounts to nothing unless it is put

to work. Taken in its entirety, a decision

actually has 2 major components, the choice

and the action. Without action following
choice, the decision remains hypothetical

and is thus no decision at all.

FOLLOW-UP ON IMPLEMENTATION

Follow-up is invariably the weakest and most

neglected link in the decision-making process,

and as such, it is often the stage during which
good ideas can perish for lack of attention.

One executive with whom the problems of

follow-up were discussed estimated that he

spent as much as 70% of his available time

86 THE HEALTH CARE MANAGER/JANUARY–MARCH 2016

following up on previous decisions, ensuring

that tasks he has assigned are actually accom-

plished and that activities he has initiated have

been followed through to completion.

Now and then, follow-up may not be nec-

essary, but this is usually so only with minor
decisions of the kind that are made automat-

ically. Any decision of any appreciable scope

or potential consequences requires conscien-

tious follow-up.

The importance of follow-up on decision

implementation is readily revealed through

the observation of newly installed or recently

changed working methods and procedures. If
a form is redesigned and its initial use is not

closely monitored, shortly after its introduc-

tion, employees will begin drifting back to

the use of the old form. At times, it may seem

necessary to go through a department and lit-

erally clean out every copy of an outdated form

so it cannot be used. Likewise, in implementing

an improvement requiring a change in the way
people accomplish a task they have been per-

forming for years, you may find that without

close follow-up old habits or simple resistance

to change will carry people back toward the

original method.

Also, any new method or improved proce-

dure of any scope will consist of a number of

steps or individual parts. It is highly likely, in
fact usually true, that the revised process con-

tains flaws or inadequacies. Proper follow-up

is required to reveal these weaknesses so they

may be corrected.

The greater the potential consequences of

the decision and the broader and more com-

plex its implementation, the more follow-up is

required. Usually, a great deal of initial follow-
up will be necessary to ensure that implemen-

tation is carried out in the manner intended

and that people become accustomed to differ-

ent ways of working. Only after a certain de-

gree of familiarity develops can follow-up be

eased, and then it cannot be ended entirely

until the decision makers are assured that the

new way has become the accepted way.
It bears repeating that follow-up is often the

weakest and most neglected link in the decision-

making process, yet it is often the most critical.

As time passes after the rendering of a decision,

the circumstances surrounding that decision are

subject to change. Sometimes, a considerable

amount of unforeseen change can occur in a

short time, necessitating adjustments in the

implementation process. Overall, a manger’s

app

Journal

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After the civil rights era, white Americans failed to support
systemic change to end racism. Will they now?
Author: Candis Watts Smith
Date: 2020
From: Gale Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection
Publisher: Gale, a Cengage Company
Document Type: Viewpoint essay
Length: 1,359 words
Content Level: (Level 5)
Lexile Measure: 1330L

Full Text:
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“[W]hite Americans’ understanding of racism is too superficial to prompt them to support policies that have the potential to lead to
greater justice for Black Americans.”
Candis Watts Smith is an associate professor of political science and African American studies at Pennsylvania State University in
University Park, Pennsylvania. In the following viewpoint, Smith explores the principle-policy gap, which refers to the distance
between how people characterize their own values and their actual willingness to support social change. The author draws parallels
between the Black Lives Matter protests of the twenty-first century and the civil rights movement of the 1960s, which led to
substantial legislation like the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Though social attitudes have evolved over time, Smith
asserts that many white Americans still fail to understand the nuances and history of racism in the United States. Closing the
principle-policy gap, the author concludes, will require both sacrifice and action on the part of white Americans.

As you read, consider the following questions:

According to Smith, how has public perception of the Black Lives Matter movement changed since 2014?1.
What lessons does the author suggest that twenty-first century Americans can learn from the civil rights movement of the2.
1960s?
In your opinion, what can individual people do to help close the principle-policy gap? Explain your answer.3.

The first wave of the Black Lives Matter movement, which crested after the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, had the
support of less than half of white Americans.

Given that Americans tend to have a very narrow definition of racism, many at that time were likely confused by the juxtaposition of
Black-led protests, implying that racism was persistent, alongside the presence of a Black family in the White House. Barack
Obama’s presidency was seen as evidence that racism was in decline.

The current, second wave of the movement feels different, in part because the past months of protests have been multiracial. The
media and scholars have noted that whites’ sensibilities have become more attuned to issues of anti-Black police violence and
discrimination.

After the first wave of the movement in 2014, there was little systemic change in response to demands by Black Lives Matter
activists. Does the fact that whites are participating in the current protests in greater numbers mean that the outcome of these
protests will be different? Will whites go beyond participating in marches and actually support fundamental policy changes to fight
anti-Black violence and discrimination?

As a scholar of political science and African American studies, I believe there are lessons from the civil rights movement 60 years ago
that can help answer those questions.

Principles didn’t turn into policy

The challenges that Black Americans face today do not precisely mimic those of the 1960s, but the history is still relevant.

During the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century, there was a concerted effort among Black freedom fighters to show white
Americans the kinds of racial terrorism the average Black American lived under.

Through the power of television, whites were able to see with their own eyes how respectable, nonviolent Black youth were treated by
police as they sought to push the U.S. to live up to its creed of liberty and equality for all of its citizens.

Monumental legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed, purportedly guaranteeing
protection from racial discrimination in many public spaces and equal opportunity to register to vote and cast a ballot.

Additionally, whites were increasingly likely to report attitudes that many would now view as nonracist over the following several
decades. For example, white Americans were more willing to have a nonwhite neighbor. They were less likely to support ideas of
biological racism or the idea that whites should always have access to better jobs over Blacks.

But these changed values and attitudes among whites never fully translated into support for government policies that would bring
racial equality to fruition for Blacks.

White Americans remained uncommitted to integrating public schools, which has been shown to drastically reduce the so-called
racial achievement gap. Whites never gave more than a modicum of support for affirmative action policies aimed to level the playing
field for jobs and higher education.

This phenomenon the distance between what people say they value and what they are willing to do to live up to their ideals is
so common that social scientists have given it a name: the principle-policy gap.

White Americans’ direct witness of police brutality led to a shift in racial attitudes and the passage of significant legislation. But even
these combined changes did not radically change the face of racial inequality in American society.

Going backward

By the 1970s and 1980s, political leaders would capitalize on whites’ sentiments that efforts for racial equality had gone too far.

That created an environment that allowed the retrenchment of civil rights-era gains. The Republican Party’s so-called “Southern
Strategy,” which aimed to turn white Southern Democrats into Republican voters, was successful in consolidating the support of white
Southerners through the use of racial dog whistles. And the War on Drugs would serve to disproportionately target and police already
segregated Black communities.

By the 1990s, racial disparities in incarceration rates had skyrocketed, schools began to resegregate, and federal and state policies
that created residential segregation and the existing racial wealth gap were never adequately addressed.

From understanding to action?

Scholars have made efforts to reveal the intricate and structural nature of racism in the U.S. Their analyses range from showing how
racial disparities across various domains of American life are intricately connected rather than coincidental; to highlighting the ways in
which race-neutral policies like the GI Bill helped to set the stage for today’s racial wealth gap; to explaining that America’s racial
hierarchy is a caste system.

But my research shows that white Americans, including white millennials, have largely become accustomed to thinking about racism
in terms of overt racial prejudice, discrimination and bigotry. They don’t see the deeper, more intractable problems that
scholars and Black activists have laid out.

Consequently, it has taken a filmed incident of incendiary racism to awaken whites to the problems clearly identified by Black
activists, just as it did for previous generations.

My research also shows that individuals’ understanding of the problem influences their willingness to support various policies. A big
issue that our society faces, then, is that white Americans’ understanding of racism is too superficial to prompt them to support
policies that have the potential to lead to greater justice for Black Americans.

Attitudes and policies don’t match

Some have suggested that this second wave of the Black Lives Matter movement is the largest social movement in American history.
These protests have led local representatives to publicly proclaim that Black Lives Matter; policymakers, government officials and
corporations to decry and remove Confederate symbols and racist images; and congressional as well as local attempts to address
police accountability.

But, as after the civil rights era, the principle-policy gap seems to be reappearing. Attitudes among whites are changing, but the
policies that people are willing to support do not necessarily address the more complex issue of structural racism.

For example, polling reveals that people support both these protests and also the way that police are handling them, despite
evidence of ongoing brutality.

The polling also shows that the majority of Americans believe that police are more likely to use deadly force against Black Americans
than against whites. But only one-quarter of those polled are willing to support efforts to reduce funding to police a policy aimed to
redistribute funds to support community equity.

More whites are willing to acknowledge white racial privilege, but only about one in eight support reparations to Blacks.

Americans may choose to dig deeper this time around. Some state legislators, for example, are attempting to leverage this moment
to create more systemic changes beyond policing in schools, judicial systems and health matters.

But ultimately, Americans will have to overcome two intertwined challenges. First, they will have to learn to detect forms of racism that
don’t lend themselves to a mobile-phone filming. And they will have to recognize that dismantling centuries of oppression takes more
than acknowledgment, understanding and well-meaning sentiment. It takes sacrifice and action.

https://theconversation.com/after-the-civil-rights-era-white-americans-failed-to-support-systemic-change-to-end-racism-will-they-
now-141954

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2020 Gale, a Cengage Company
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Smith, Candis Watts. “After the civil rights era, white Americans failed to support systemic change to end racism. Will they now?”

Gale Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection, Gale, 2020. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints,
https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/TGREEL614947152/OVIC?u=ccsf_main&sid=OVIC&xid=80cb4a25. Accessed 1 Nov. 2020.
Originally published as “After the civil rights era, white Americans failed to support systemic change to end racism. Will they
now?” The Conversation, 13 Aug. 2020.

Gale Document Number: GALE|TGREEL614947152

https://theconversation.com/after-the-civil-rights-era-white-americans-failed-to-support-systemic-change-to-end-racism-will-they-now-141954

Journal

Hello! 👋
We’ll start soon

Who am I?

Do only Nerds do
Dataviz?*

*Betteridge’s law applies (mostly)!

CW: Suicide, Illness

Pre-attentive attributes

A brief history lesson

William Playfair, 1786

Florence Nightingale, 1859

Charles Minard, 1869

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Playfair

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Joseph_Minard

1985 2013

Visualisation is everywhere

Because it works!

Pradeep Kumar G

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/pradeepkumar.g/viz/SampleSuperstore-SalesPerformance/viz_

Samuel Parsons

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/sparsonsdataviz/viz/RiversofTimeMarvelStudiosMCUIronviz2021/RiversofTime

Simon Scarr

http://www.simonscarr.com/iraqs-bloody-toll

Sonja Kuijpers

https://www.studioterp.nl/a-view-on-despair-a-datavisualization-project-by-studio-terp/

Giorgia Lupi

http://giorgialupi.com/bruises-the-data-we-dont-see

Neil Richards

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/neil.richards/viz/DecimalFractions/DecimalFractions

https://www.pentagram.com/work/starbucks

Kat Greenbrook

https://www.myplasticfootprint.co.nz/

Alex Waleczek

https://www.curvediscussion.com/new-zealand-lego-map/

How do you get into
Data Visualisation?

Start a job!

Build your skills!

Data

Domain Design

Data

Domain Design

Data

Domain Design

Build your portfolio!

1. MakeoverMonday
2. WorkoutWednesday
3. IronQuest
4. IronViz
5. Real World Fake Data
6. Back 2 Viz Basics
7. SportsvizSunday
8. ProjectHealthViz
9. 30DayChartChallenge
10. 30DayMapChallenge
11. Viz for Social Good
12. Storytelling With Data Challenges

https://www.makeovermonday.co.uk/

https://www.workout-wednesday.com/

https://sarahlovesdata.co.uk/tag/ironquest/

https://www.tableau.com/community/iron-viz

https://sonsofhierarchies.com/real-world-fake-data/

https://www.thetableaustudentguide.com/vizbasics

https://www.sportsvizsunday.com/

https://vizzendata.com/projecthealthviz/

https://twitter.com/30daychartchall?lang=en

https://30daymapchallenge.com/

https://www.vizforsocialgood.com/

https://community.storytellingwithdata.com/challenges

Build your network!

Build your
skills
portfolio
network

Communicating insights
is a rare skill

Alex Waleczek
@genetis

www.curvediscussion.com

Journal

Hill 1

Kyle Hill

Professor Hill

ENGL 1A & 1AS

3 February 2021

Sample Unit 2 Reading Journal: “Racism Today is Subtle, Insidious, and Systemic”

● Dr. Quist-Adade’s thesis or central claim is that racism is even more a problem

today because people are scared to talk about it for fear of being labeled racist or

losing privilege, so they silently participate in a system that advantages some

and disadvantages others; he also emphasizes that racism is a social construct

that people have created to signal insiders and outsiders and that behaviors can

change – this is not a hopeless situation.

● Dr. Quist-Adade’s paper seemed logical and well presented to me. The one thing

that I did not observe Dr. Quist-Adade do in the paper was handling opposing

viewpoints. While Dr. Quist-Adade does cite sources in his paper, he mainly uses

his sources to support and illustrate his ideas, not necessarily challenge them.

It’s hard for me to imagine what those opposing viewpoints might be since I tend

to agree with Dr. Quist-Adade. For this reason, I think it would have been helpful

for me to see how others might argue against the idea that racism is subtle and

systemic just so I have a better idea of what the opposition might say.

● “For example, racism in the USA has ceased to be the avowed commitment of

Southern white supremacists. Now its INSIDIOUS form is an unconscious habit

corrupting legions of Euro-Americans, including some well-meaning ones among

them” (Quist-Adade).

Hill 2

○ Adjective: operating or proceeding in an inconspicuous or seemingly

harmless way but actually with grave effect.

○ My cousin was ready to divorce her husband by the time she realized how

INSIDIOUS their daily quarrels and disagreements had become.

Journal

Introduction to Data Visualisation
Week 01 Lecture Session 01
BUSMGT 708 Communicating Business Insights

Agenda:

Welcome

An introduction to Data Visualisation

An overview of the course: BUSMGT 708

Preparation for next session

Welcome

An introduction to Data Visualisation

An overview of the course: BUSMGT 708

Preparation for next session

Learning outcomes:

By the end of this session you should be able to:

Define what a data visualisation is

Articulate why we use data visualisations

Outline the 3 main views on data visualisations

Have an understanding of the purpose and structure of the course

What is Data Visualisation?

Andy Kirk in Data Visualization: A Successful Design Process (2012)

The representation and presentation of data that exploits our visual perception abilities in order to amplify cognition.

What is a Data Visualisation?

Tamara, Munzner in A Nested Model for Visualization Design and Validation (2009)

Visual representations of datasets designed to help people carry out tasks more effectively.

Reasons for creating data visualisations

Almagest

Claudius Ptolemy

150 CE

Leonardo
Da Vinci

1505

Map of Paris

1575

Map of Paris

2019

William Playfair

1786

John Snow

1854

Florence Nightingale

1856

Joseph Minard

1861

Source:

Edward Tufte

Some more modern visualisations

https://public.tableau.com/en-us/s/gallery

https://public.tableau.com/en-us/s/blog/2022/01/look-back-some-great-data-visualizations-2021

Why don’t we just use numbers?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe%27s_quartet

Anscombes Quartet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe%27s_quartet

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002128

The Datasaurus Dozen

https://www.autodesk.com/research/publications/same-stats-different-graphs

Reasons for creating data visualisations

Record information

Explore data

Prove hypotheses

Communicate ideas

Views on Visualisation

Visualization

Real World

Source: van Wijk (2005)

Tech perspective

aim for provable effectiveness and efficiency

Science perspective:

aim for generic laws with predictive power

Art perspective

aim for elegance and beauty

Technology

Science

Art

Welcome

An introduction to Data Visualisation

An overview of the course: BUSMGT 708

Preparation for next session

Course Goal

This course will equip you with the ability to utilise data visualisation tools and techniques in crafting and adapting data communication strategies for different types of audiences. It will enable you to offer critical evaluation of the presentation of data and to understand the implications of these for ethical communication.

The ability to take data – to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it’s going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades…

I do think those skills – of being able to access, understand, and communicate the insights you get from data analysis – are going to be extremely important. Managers need to be able to access and understand the data themselves.

Hal Varian, The McKinsey Quarterly, January 2009

“Communication is the most important skill any leader can possess…”

Richard Branson, Forbes, 2016

Course Learning Outcomes:

By the end of this course it is expected that you will be able to:

Create a data visualisation, from a provided dataset, that delivers a compelling narrative to a specified audience.

Create data visualisations in a data visualisation tool.

Evaluate, critique, and suggest improvements to, visual representations of data.

Identify, and suggest improvements to, unethical uses of data visualisations in business settings.

Design, and deliver effective, engaging presentations to an audience that carefully consider the audience’s perspective and address their needs.

Welcome

An introduction to Data Visualisation

An overview of the course: BUSMGT 708

Preparation for next session

Journal

Frameworks
Week 02b
BUSMGT 708 Communicating Business Insights

Learning outcomes:

By the end of this session you should be able to:

Understand and apply the Design Triangle

Understand and apply the Nested Model of Visualization Design and Validation

Understand and apply Fung’s Junk Chart Trifecta

Agenda:

Design Triangle

Nested Model

Fung’s Junk Chart Trifecta

Design Triangle

Nested Model

Fung’s Junk Chart Trifecta

Design Triangle

Source: Miksch & Aigner (2014).

Representation

& Interaction

Data

Task

User

scale (quantitative vs. qualitative)

frame of reference (abstract vs. spatial)

kind of data (events vs. states)

number of variables (univariate vs. multivariate)

Group factors:

application domain (e.g., health-care, business etc.)

physical environment (e.g., poor lighting)

social factors (e.g., collaborative work or cultural specifics technical specifics (e.g., hardware, screen resolution)

Individual factors:

level of technical and domain expertise (e.g., experts, apprentices, or novices)

specific metaphors and mental models that are used

disabilities (e.g., color-blindness).

Elementary tasks address individual data elements (individual or individual groups of data)

Synoptic tasks involve a general view and consider sets of values or groups of data in their entirety.

Design Triangle

Representation

& Interaction

Data

Task

User

Expressiveness

Source: Miksch & Aigner (2014).

Expressiveness

A visualization is considered to be expressive if the relevant information of a dataset (and only this) is expressed by the visualization.

The term “relevant” implies that expressiveness of a visualization can only be assessed regarding a particular user working with the visual representation to achieve certain goals.

“A visualization is said to be expressive if and only if it encodes all the data relations intended and no other data relations.” [Card, 2008, p. 523]

Source: Miksch & Aigner (2014).

Design Triangle

Representation

& Interaction

Effectiveness

Data

Task

User

Expressiveness

Source: Miksch & Aigner (2014).

Effectiveness

A visualization is effective if it addresses the capabilities of the human visual system. Since perception, and hence the mental image of a visual representation, varies among users, effectiveness is user-dependent.

Nonetheless, some general rules for effective visualization have been established in the visualization community.

“Effectiveness criteria identify which of these graphical languages [that are expressive], in a given situation, is the most effective at exploiting the capabilities of the output medium and the human visual system.” (Mackinlay, 1986)

Source: http://www.infovis-wiki.net/index.php?title=Effectiveness

Design Triangle

Representation

& Interaction

Expressiveness

Effectiveness

Appropriateness

Data

Task

User

Source: Miksch & Aigner (2014).

Appropriateness

Appropriateness regards the trade-off between efforts required for creating the visual representation and the benefits yielded by it. If this trade-off is balanced, the visualization is considered to be appropriate.

Source:http://www.infovis-wiki.net/index.php?title=Appropriateness

Design Triangle

Representation

& Interaction

Expressiveness

Effectiveness

Appropriateness

Data

Task

User

Source: Miksch & Aigner (2014).

Relevance

Usefulness

Cost

Design Triangle

Nested Model

Fung’s Junk Chart Trifecta

Nested Model of Visualization Design and Validation

Source: Munzer (2009)

Domain Situation

Data/Task Abstraction

Encoding/Interaction Technique

Algorithm

Nested Model of Visualization Design and Validation

Source: Munzer (2009)

Domain Situation

describing a group of target users, their domain of interest, their questions, and their data

Data/Task Abstraction

abstracting the specific domain questions and data from the domain specific form into a generic, computational form

Encoding/Interaction Technique

decide on the specific way to create and manipulate the visual representation of the abstraction

Algorithm

crafting a detailed procedure that allows a computer to automatically and efficiently carry out the desired visualization goal

Nested Model of Visualization Design and Validation

Source: Munzer (2009)

Threat: Wrong problem Avoid: Observe and interview target users

Threat: Bad data/task abstraction

Validate: Test on target users, document usage for utility

Threat: Ineffective encoding/interaction technique

Validate: Test on users using qualitative/quantitative measures

Threat: Slow algorithm

Avoid: Analyze computational complexity

Validate: Measure algorithm speed

Implement System

Design Triangle

Nested Model

Fung’s Junk Chart Trifecta

Kaiser Fung

Columbia University

Source: http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/junk-charts-trifecta-checkup-the-definitive-guide.html

How to identify junk charts?

What is the QUESTION?

What does the DATA say?

What does the VISUAL say?

The Trifecta

Source: http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/junk-charts-trifecta-checkup-the-definitive-guide.html

Single Issue: Type Q

Source: http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/junk-charts-trifecta-checkup-the-definitive-guide.html

Single Issue: Type D

Source: http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/junk-charts-trifecta-checkup-the-definitive-guide.html

Single Issue: Type V

Source: http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/junk-charts-trifecta-checkup-the-definitive-guide.html

Double Issue: Type QD

Source: http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/junk-charts-trifecta-checkup-the-definitive-guide.html

Double Issue: Type QV

Source: http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/junk-charts-trifecta-checkup-the-definitive-guide.html

Double Issue: Type DV

Source: http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/junk-charts-trifecta-checkup-the-definitive-guide.html

http://musically.com/2014/03/04/how-digital-music-services-may-be-fuelling-a-superstar-artist-economy/?curator=MediaREDEF

HOW DIGITAL MUSIC SERVICES MAY BE FUELLING A ‘SUPERSTAR ARTIST ECONOMY’

Triple Issue: Type QDV

Source: http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/junk-charts-trifecta-checkup-the-definitive-guide.html

Triple Issue: Type QDV

Source: http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/junk-charts-trifecta-checkup-the-definitive-guide.html

Recap:

Design Triangle

Nested Model

Fung’s Junk Chart Trifecta

References:

Card,S. (2008) Information visualization, in A. Sears and J.A. Jacko (eds.), The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies, and Emerging Applications, Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc Inc, 2007.

Mackinlay, J. (1986). Automating the design of graphical presentations of relational information. ACM Transactions on Graphics,5(2), 110-141. doi:10.1145/22949.22950

Miksch, S., & Aigner, W. (2014). A matter of time: Applying a data–users–tasks design triangle to visual analytics of time-oriented data. Computers & Graphics, 38, 286-290. doi:10.1016/j.cag.2013.11.002

Munzner, T. (2015). Visualization analysis and design. Boca Raton: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group.

Tufte, E. (2001) The visual display of quantitive information.

Journal

Perception
Week 04a Lecture
BUSMGT 708 Communicating Business Insights

Learning outcomes:

By the end of this session you should be able to

Understand that we cannot always trust what we see

Identify and apply the Gestalt laws in data visualisation

Apply preattentive processing in data visualisation

‹#›

Agenda:

‹#›

Brain Rules

Perception

Preattentive Processing

Gestalt Laws

Key Takeaways

Why Visualization? Brain Rules:

#4: People don’t pay attention
to boring things

#9: Stimulate more of the
senses at the same time

#10: Vision trumps all other senses

‹#›

Brain Rules

Perception

Preattentive Processing

Gestalt Laws

Key Takeaways

Perception

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY

‹#›

Used by Permission of Dr. Beau Lotto (www.LottoLab.org)

DATA

Perception

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress

‹#›

Source: Wiki Commons (Lotus, Illinois Railroad Tracks)

‹#›

Source: Wikipedia (from the Lunar and Planetary Institute: http://www.lpi.usra.edu)

‹#›

The Moiré effect

‹#›

Gridlines spaced
and muted

‹#›

The Hermann effect

(the scintillating grid)

‹#›

Unit Chart

(notice Hermann effect)

‹#›

Brain Rules

Perception

Preattentive Processing

Gestalt Laws

Key Takeaways

Preattentive Processing

For many years vision researchers have been investigating how the human visual system analyses images. An important initial result was the discovery of a limited set of visual properties that are detected very rapidly and accurately by the low-level visual system. These properties were initially called preattentive, since their detection seemed to precede focused attention. We now know that attention plays a critical role in what we see, even at this early stage of vision. The term preattentive continues to be used, however, since it conveys an intuitive notion of the speed and ease with which these properties are identified.

Typically, tasks that can be performed on large multi-element displays in less than 200 to 250 milliseconds (msec) are considered preattentive. Eye movements take at least 200 msec to initiate, and random locations of the elements in the display ensure that attention cannot be prefocused on any particular location, yet viewers report that these tasks can be completed with very little effort. This suggests that certain information in the display is processed in parallel by the low-level visual system.

Source: https://www.csc2.ncsu.edu/faculty/healey/PP/

‹#›

How many times does the digit 7 appear?

‹#›

# of times digit 7 appears: 17

‹#›

# of times digit 7 appears: 17

‹#›

Label problems

Color problems

Hard to make visual comparisons

Do we get the same Information?

‹#›

Spot the odd one out!

Source: https://www.csc2.ncsu.edu/faculty/healey/PP/

‹#›

Spot the odd one out!

Source: https://www.csc2.ncsu.edu/faculty/healey/PP/

‹#›

Spot the odd one out!

Source: https://www.csc2.ncsu.edu/faculty/healey/PP/

‹#›

Spot the odd one out!

Source: https://www.csc2.ncsu.edu/faculty/healey/PP/

‹#›

Spot the odd one out!

Source: https://www.csc2.ncsu.edu/faculty/healey/PP/

‹#›

Spot the odd one out!

Source: https://www.csc2.ncsu.edu/faculty/healey/PP/

‹#›

Brain Rules

Perception

Preattentive Processing

Gestalt Laws

Key Takeaways

Gestalt Laws

Source: https://excelcharts.com/data-visualization-excel-users/gestalt-laws/

‹#›

Gestalt Laws

Source: https://excelcharts.com/data-visualization-excel-users/gestalt-laws/

similarity: things that look like each other (size, color, shape) are related

proximity: things that are visually close to each other are related

connection: things that are visually connected are related

continuity: we complete hidden objects into simple, familiar shapes

closure: we see incomplete shapes

common fate: elements with the same moving direction are perceived as a unit

‹#›

Gestalt Law of Proximity

Source: https://excelcharts.com/data-visualization-excel-users/gestalt-laws/

‹#›

Gestalt Law of Similarity

Source: https://excelcharts.com/data-visualization-excel-users/gestalt-laws/

‹#›

Gestalt Law of Continuity

Source: https://excelcharts.com/data-visualization-excel-users/gestalt-laws/

‹#›

Gestalt Law of Continuity

Source: https://excelcharts.com/data-visualization-excel-users/gestalt-laws/

‹#›

Gestalt Law of Connectedness

Source: https://excelcharts.com/data-visualization-excel-users/gestalt-laws/

‹#›

Gestalt Law of Closure

Source: https://excelcharts.com/data-visualization-excel-users/gestalt-laws/

‹#›

What letter is this?

Adapted from Lera Boroditsky as seen on Brain Games

‹#›

Gestalt Law of Common Fate

Source: https://excelcharts.com/data-visualization-excel-users/gestalt-laws/

‹#›

Brain Rules

Perception

Preattentive Processing

Gestalt Laws

Key Takeaways

Key takeaways:

The understanding and interpretation of data is an activity of human cognition

Asking questions, discovering patterns, drawing meaning from the data

Creative, visually-driven process; also requires empirical and mathematical skills

Requires subject matter knowledge

Built-in rules (or at least, guidelines) affect the way we process information

‹#›

Key takeaways:

We can use preattentive characteristics and gestalt laws to reduce cognitive load

Humans like to group objects based on color, shape, direction, proximity, closure/enclosure;

Humans like simple, close, smooth, symmetrical, easy-to-process shapes;

If we are aware of these laws we can take advantage of them to design better charts or dashboards.

We must also be aware their negative impact: we shouldn’t force the reader to see groups that aren’t really there; a simple shape is not necessarily the right shape.

‹#›

Journal

Visual Encoding and Colour
Week 04b
BUSMGT 708 Communicating Business Insights

Learning outcomes:

By the end of this session you should be able to

Identify why colour is important to data visualisation

Understand the impact of colour blindness

Be able to select appropriate colour schemes for your visualisations

Agenda:

Use of Colour in Data Visualisation

Colour Vision Deficiency (aka colour blindness)

Improve a real world visualisation

Use of Colour in Data Visualisation

Colour Vision Deficiency (aka colour blindness)

Improve a real world visualisation

Colour (Hue)

Changes to the HUE (colour)

Changes to the SATURATION (intensity)

Changes to the Value (brightness)

Relationships on a Traditional Color Wheel

Image used under the Wikipedia Creative Commons license.

http://www.wikipedia.com

Relationships on a RGB Color Wheel

Computer displays use red, green, and blue elements.
This results in a shifted arrangement of complimentary colors.

Image used under the Wikipedia Creative Commons license.

http://www.wikipedia.com

Does this color use enhance or detract?

What does colour even mean here?

From http://online.wsj.com – The Wall Street Journal Online, originally published August 7, 2010

What meaning does colour bring to the presentation?

Source: Juice Analytics Whitepaper (part 3)

Source: The Big Book of Dashboards (Figure 1.16)

Source: The Big Book of Dashboards (Figure 1.17)

Sequential colour

Source: The Big Book of Dashboards (Figure 1.19)

Diverging colour

Source: The Big Book of Dashboards (Figure 1.20)

Categorical colour

Source: The Big Book of Dashboards (Figure 1.21)

Highlight colour

Source: The Big Book of Dashboards (Figure 1.22)

Alerting colour

Too Much Colour

Short-term Memory = “small chunks of information”

Requires reusing the same or similar colour

Requires frequent reference to the legend

Too Much Colour

Use of Colour in Data Visualisation

Colour Vision Deficiency (aka colour blindness)

Improve a real world visualisation

Colour

Normal

Colour

Vision

Deficiency

The Eye with Normal Colour Vision

Three types of colour sensitive cones

Short (S) – respond to short wave lengths

Medium (M) – respond to medium wave lengths

– more sensitive to green colours

Long (L) – respond to long wave lengths

– more sensitive to red colours

Colour Vision Deficiency

= approximately 8% of men have colour vision deficiency

no perceptible difference between red, orange, brown, and green

1 out of 100 men

5 out of 100 men

2 cones

(dichromat)

(L) protanopia

red-blind

(M) deuteranopia

green-blind

3 cones

(trichromat)

(L) protanomaly

red-weak

(M) deuteranomaly

green-weak

Test yourself

How colour is perceived by someone with CVD

Source: www.colblindor.com

Source: The Big Book of Dashboards (Figure 33.3)

Colour

Source: The Big Book of Dashboards (Figure 1.24)

VisCheck
www.vischeck.com

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/colorblindly/floniaahmccleoclneebhhmnjgdfijgg?hl=en

Protanope Simulation

Source: The Big Book of Dashboards (Figure 1.25)

VisCheck
www.vischeck.com

Protanope Simulation

Source: The Big Book of Dashboards (Figure 1.26)

Source: The Big Book of Dashboards (Figure 1.27)

Source: The Big Book of Dashboards (Figure 33.8)

Source: The Big Book of Dashboards (Figure 33.9)

Source: The Big Book of Dashboards (Figure 33.10)

Example in Practice

Source: The Big Book of Dashboards (Figure 33.11)

Use of Colour in Data Visualisation

Colour Vision Deficiency (aka colour blindness)

Improve a real world visualisation

Flag of Mali

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/29/upshot/harvey-rainfall-where-you-live.html

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/07/upshot/modern-love-what-we-write-when-we-write-about-love.html

Advanced overview of Tableau

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Tableau+Zen+Master+Webinar+Series

Journal

Pediatric Rotation

Critical reflection of your growth and
development during your practicum experience in a clinical setting has the
benefit of helping you identify opportunities for improvement in your clinical
skills while also recognizing your clinical strengths and successes.

This
week, you will write a Journal Entry reflecting on your clinical strengths and
opportunities for improvement.

Journal Entry (2–3
pages): 

Based
on your experience,

Describe an interesting case
or a case that you have never seen before.
Explain what you found
challenging.
Explain what you would do
differently from your Preceptor.
Explain the cultural
differences you found challenging.

Journal

Dashboards and Infographics
Week 05 Lecture Session
BUSMGT 708 Communicating Business Insights

Learning outcomes:

By the end of this session you should be able to:

Articulate what an infographic is

Identify some key characteristics of what makes a good infographic

Materials based on Tableau resources created by:

Jeffrey Shaffer

Agenda:

Dashboards

Infographics

Dashboards

Infographics

What is a dashboard?

A dashboard is a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives; consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance.

– Stephen Few (2004)

Dashboards – Supporting Attributes

Information is presented using small, concise, direct, & clear display of media

Clearly stated messages

Each point should be limited to the space needed

Customized

tailored to the needs of
a specific group or individual

Consistent layout

Data changes over time

Interface is consistent
(until it’s time for the next revision)

Few, Stephen (2013), Information Dashboard Design, p. 28

Dashboard and KPI Rollups
Different Views for Levels of the Organization

Customer

Key customer contact data

Marketing

Outbound and marketing response

Sales

Orders and fulfillment

Billing

Accounts receivable and collections

Prospects

Potential customers and activities

CEO – Strategic

Manager – Tactical

Team – Operational

KPI and Scorecard Rollups
Example Scope and KPI Categories

Sales Activities

Loyalty & Retention

Campaign Success

Revenue and Profit

Bad Debt

Team KPIs

Division Performance

Organizational Topline and Risk

Many KPI categories:

Industry Benchmarks

Cash Flow

Risk and Security

Customer Satisfaction

Asset Management

Information Quality

Customer

Key customer contact data

Marketing

Outbound and marketing response

Sales

Orders and fulfillment

Billing

Accounts receivable and collections

Prospects

Potential customers and activities

CEO – Strategic

Manager – Tactical

Team – Operational

Source: “blinged dashboard” from http://robslink.com/SAS/democd36/oil_blinged.htm

Source: “unblinged dashboard” from http://robslink.com/SAS/democd36/oil_unblinged.htm

Dashboard – Low Effectiveness

Source: Targit BI Balanced Scorecard from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vuoQgYPdAw

Avoid Useless Bling

Some of the widgets and displays provided by tool vendors are glitzy but unhelpful – like these:

Require a disproportionate amount of room for the information presented

Hard to read and understand

Little actionable information

Dashboard – High Effectiveness

Source: Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few

CIO Dashboard

One gauge takes the same space that can accommodate twenty data points in this dashboard design.

Source: Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few

Dashboard “Dos”

Content position and size should match its

importance and frequency of use

Use color and formatting to draw attention

where needed, rather than to decorate

Visually associate data and content that is related

Use the needs of the user to drive the layout, rather than forcing layout with an inflexible grid
(note: this is a consideration when choosing tools)

When deciding placement, consider how the eye will scan the page…

Few, Stephen (2013), Information Dashboard Design, p. 28

Eye Scanning Patterns (Web)

Red indicates more visual attention on that portion of the page

Source: http://styleguide.yahoo.com/writing/write-web/eye-tracking-where-do-readers-look-first

This “F” pattern is widely cited on the web
but is partially a product of text-heavy pages.

Source: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html

Eye Scanning Patterns (Web)

Patterns are affected by content…

…as well as the form of media being read.

Source: http://www.humlab.lu.se/resources/publications/studentpapers/Holmberg_04.pdf

Emphasis Guidelines for Dashboards

Dominance of the neutral quadrants may change based on content.

Source: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html

Most emphasis

Neutral

Least emphasis

Sales Team Dashboard

Source: Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few

Sales Team Dashboard

Most emphasis

Neutral

Least emphasis

Source: Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few

CIO Dashboard

Source: Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few

CIO Dashboard

Source: Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few

Most emphasis

Neutral

Least emphasis

Source: The Big Book of Dashboards (BigBookofDashboards.com)

Most emphasis

Neutral

Least emphasis

Most emphasis

Neutral

Least emphasis

Dashboards

Infographics

What is an infographic?

“A tool for the designer to communicate with readers, and a tool for readers to analyze what’s being presented to them.”

Source: The Functional Art (p. 73) by Alberto Cairo

Infographics:

A quick and easy way to digest data rich information

Goals are to:

Humanize data

Capture interest with colour, images and charts

Increase retention of the message

They do this by telling a story

Quickly and clearly

With a clear purpose

To an audience that is not familiar with your topic

Are they art or communication?

Elements

Story/purpose evident

Clear titles

Descriptive text boxes

Good use of white space

Data referenced

Axes on the Cairo Visualization Wheel

Note: Per Alberto, the position of these axis is subjective…and reflects his own thinking.

“How Politicians Use Twitter”

https://orig03.deviantart.net/494a/f/2014/171/0/1/size_comparison___science_fiction_spaceships_by_dirkloechel-d6lfgdf.jpg

Axes on the Cairo Visualization Wheel

Note: Per Alberto, the position of these axis is subjective…and reflects his own thinking.

journal

14 � March 2018 www.humancapitalonline.com ◆

They are the ones who popularized
selfies, food porn, online communities,
byte sized learning, and introduced the
multitasking wonders of smartphones
to the world. However, it is evident
that they bring with them a cache of
unique experiences and skills that are
invaluable to the workplace. As today’s
workplace creates room for millennials
who are seen to make for 50% of the
global workforce by 2020, and with the
arrival of Gen Z, the standard
engagement practices of the past need
to be done away with, so as to
accommodate ourselves for the arrival
of Gen Z and the inundation of
millennials. Failure to pay heed to this
would only result in the organisation
losing out on the top performing talent,
and in real quick time, and even worse,
to their competitors who offered them
an opportunity as per the needs of
their engagement. Revamping and

illennials are being viewed
through the wrong optics
since they are perceived as
the initiators of disruptions.M

COVER STORY

As today’s workplace creates room for millennials who are seen to make

for 50% of the global workforce by 2020, and with the arrival of Gen Z, the

standard engagement practices of the past need to be done away with, so

as to accommodate ourselves for the arrival of Gen Z and the inundation of

millennials. Failure to pay heed to this would only result in the organisation

losing out on the top performing talent, and in real quick time, and even

worse, to their competitors who offered them an opportunity as per the

needs of their engagement.

The

“When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people
are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.” – Simon Sinek

Engagement
Paradox At Work

By Shruti Chadha and S. Ajay Kumar

www.humancapitalonline.com◆ March 2018 � 15

employees are unlikely to take on
anything outside of what they see as
their core remit. They will make
excuses or find reasons as to why they
cannot take on extra work, or try
newer ways of doing things. They may
refuse to entertain even the simplest
of requests.
3. Withdrawal from meetings and
gatherings: Disengaged employees
tend to withdraw and even isolate
themselves from their co-workers.
They choose to opt out when it comes
to meetings and gatherings. Even if
they are present during a meeting or
a team discussion, their minds wander
to other places. Paying little interest
to the matters of the organisation,
disengaged employees make fewer
efforts to engage and participate in
any of the company events.
4. I g n o r i n g r e f e r r a l r e q u e s t s :
Employees who are disengaged are
unlikely to refer candidates for open
positions. Even when you are actively
seeking out referrals, and do not
receive any from your employees, it
is an indicator that they may be
disengaged. Actively disengaged
employees might even use social
media to discourage others from
applying. The Net Promoter Score
(NPS) is where ratings can be given
on a zero to ten scale as to how likely
it is for a person to recommend this
company as a place to work.
Employees who score 9 or 10 are
called ‘Promoters’, those who score 7

C O V E R S T O R Y

innovating recognition practices can
capitalize employee talents so that they
flourish in the company. The changing
rules of engagement for the diverse
generation, spotting critical signs of
disengagement, employer-employee
expectation mismatch, innovative ways
of enhancing engagement along with
illustrations on best industry practices,
and the contemporary ways of
measuring the employee engagement
pulse have been mentioned in the
paragraphs to follow.

The changing laws of
engagement
In late 2014, the Northeastern
University conducted a survey on teens
in the age bracket of 16-19 years, and
came about with certain traits on Gen
Z that could give a sense of the
behaviour pattern of this wannabe
generation.
� 63 percent of the respondents stating

that colleges should be teaching
them on entrepreneurship

� 42 percent expect to be self-
employed later in life

� Interpersonal or face-to-face
interaction is highly important as
compared to communicating via
technology

Spotting critical signs of
disengagement
The 7 tell-tale signs that are needed to
be monitored by HR business partners
and engagement experts with empirical
evidence in order to help organisations
plan their engagement strategies.
1. Excessive absenteeism and
tardiness: That disengaged employees
do not rush to work in the mornings
is a common red flag. But, if some
employees are turning in slightly late
it does not imply that they are
disengaged, but it could be a strong
indicator that they are lacking time
management skills, are struggling with
work-life balance, or maintaining a
different lifestyle. Howe ve r, it is
noteworthy if employees are very late,
leave the office randomly, or take
extended lunch breaks. Absenteeism
is a lot more serious than tardiness.
Employees who do not come to work
at all, or who take lots of random sick
days are often simply fed up with their
work. And, if they seem to be
consistently ignoring pressing
deadlines and targets by requesting
days off, they are clearly disengaged.
2. Poor quality of work: Disengaged
employees certainly do not aim for
maximum quality. Actively disengaged
employees will not meet expectations.
Or, they may be doing just enough to
keep themselves from getting fired.
So, if there is a degeneration or
stagnation in the overall quality, it may
signal low engagement. Disengaged

“Fostering a culture of ‘trust’ in the organisation so employees feel empowered

and responsible to go beyond themselves to ensure the organisation’s success

— this is what great places to work strive for. And building this trust does not come

easily. Engaging employees is one of the most important HR mandate besides

talent attraction and retention. We have seen strong correlation between employee

engagement and profitability. With the right strategy and approach, employee

engagement can become one of the strongest tools for robust business outcomes.

While there are several ways to boost engagement with employees, one of the

most effective ones is to foster a system of continuous feedback and conversations.

Praising an employee for a job well done is just as important as pointing out

where there is room for improvement. Also crucial is to give

them credit and show appreciation in a timely manner. Building

an engaged, all-in workforce is an assured metric for the

success of not just the business but of the leader as well.”

SHRADDHANJALI RAO

Head of Human Resources

SAP India

16 � March 2018 www.humancapitalonline.com ◆

or 8 are ‘Passives’, and an employee
who gives a score of 6 or below can
be viewed as a ‘Detractor’. In general,
we like to improve upon and
participate in things that we care about
and appear meaningful to us. So, either
the employees are not connecting with
the mission and values of the company,
or they are unhappy in the office
environment.
5. Managers do not praise their team
members: An HR business partner
needs to ask the managers and
supervisors, “what did you do in the
past month to reward or praise your
team members?” If in return, there is
a hesitant answer or an awkward
silence, it might just be the beginning
of a grave engagement problem.
Employees who do not see their work
being recognized are unlikely to be
motivated or engaged.
6. Employees at odds and raise
complaints: Disengaged employees are
not interested in solving problems and
making progress. They often express
their lack of engagement through open
frustration and aggression. These
employees will always be at odds with
someone, and will resist new initiatives
or instructions from their manager.
7. Lack of ownership: ‘Nothing to
do with me’, ‘not my responsibility,’
‘thought someone else would do it’
are common refrains of those who
are disengaged with the company and
their role. Finding things that they do
care about in their role, even if it is
only one element, is the key to
changing the mindset of these

employees. Reallocation of duties
among a team can often revive
disengaged employees, with certain
team members thriving to do some
tasks that the others are not truly
deriving enjoyment from.

The Expectation Mismatch
A search into the motivators of the
workforce will invariably lead us to
the famous Herzberg’s two-factor
motivational theor y. Her zberg’s
findings revealed that certain
characteristics of a job are consistently
related to job satisfaction, while
certain factors are associated with job
dissatisfaction. He stated that factors
such as achievement, recognition,
responsibility and career advancement
are key motivating factors that will
help employees exceed at their work.
Whereas factors such as supervision,

company policies, work conditions,
salary were the hygiene factors, which
when absent were sure to demotivate
employees. With generations changing
at the workplace, from baby boomers
to Gen X, from Gen X to Millennials,
and now to Gen Z, we will need to
revisit motivational theories and
redefine their placement. With the
enhanced presence of the millennial
workforce and the arrival of the Gen
Z, certain factors that were seen as
motivators over the last decade are
no longer seen as motivating, but have
become the basic hygiene factors for
the multigenerational workforce.

Hygiene Factor 1:
Connectivity
Today, it is hard to find millennials/
generation Z without a smartphone,
and by 2020, it is evident that every
employee would be hooked to a smart
device. What would it look like if the
generation is to be married to their
work? What is it that would make them
wake up every morning excited to put
their nose to the grindstone another
day? Millennials want to put everything
they have into their work. Their hearts
sing because they are living their
purpose. Their minds are stimulated
by the challenge. Like Millennials, Gen
Z is a cohort of digital natives; they
have had the technology and the many
forms of communication since birth.
They are used to instant access to
information, and, like their older Gen
Y counterparts, they are continually
processing information. Like
Millennials, they prefer to solve their
own problems, and will turn to
YouTube or other video platforms for

“Employee engagement is one of the key pillars to building a great company.

Today’s dynamic and competitive environment clearly demands a lot more from

HR than it was before. From creating a robust learning and development ecosystem

across levels to ensuring employees live a healthy and rewarding life; employee

engagement plays a massive role in an organisation. Technology plays a powerful

tool here, for example online learning platforms are playing a crucial role in helping

employees unearth their potential. Creating a caring and humane environment that

offers flexibility, mentorship roles are other ways to engage employees and build

goodwill. Do not forget to recognize achievements and build a rewarding

ecosystem. Employees should feel valued and they should

cherish their journey with an organisation. Happy and

successful employees are an asset to building a successful

company.”

REENA TYAGI

Chief Human Resource Officer

Cigna TTK

Disengaged employees certainly do not
aim for maximum quality. Actively
disengaged employees will not meet

expectations. Or, they may be doing just enough
to keep themselves from getting fired. So, if there
is a degeneration or stagnation in the overall
quality, it may signal low engagement. Disengaged
employees are unlikely to take on anything
outside of what they see as their core remit.

“

COVER STORY

www.humancapitalonline.com◆ March 2018 � 17

tutorials to troubleshoot prior to
seeking assistance. They also place
great value on the reviews of their
peers. Fostering connectivity in the
workplace is a profound key to such
a kind of holistic happiness. For
managers with millennials on their
teams, this is great news for if they
can inspire creativity and innovation,
and if they have hired well, they are
sure to have a talented team of leaders
with some untapped potential.

Industry Practice: DreamWorks
Although employees at DreamWorks
Animation are provided with perks
such as free refreshments, paid
opportunity to decorate workspaces,
and company parties after the
completion of big projects, a practice
truly appreciated by them is if they
are encouraged to share their
personal work and projects amongst
their co-workers at such parties and
events. This makes way for
appreciation of non-work related
projects, kindles their creativity, and
makes employees feel that they are
more than just the work that they
perform. With other companies like
Google also providing employees with
the time to work and pitch their own
projects, and, this is a great way to
really tell your employees that not only
are they trusted, but that their input
and creativity is really valued.

Hygiene Factor 2: Career
Progression
Millennials grew up in a different world.
When they work at a company, money
does not merely motivate them.
Instead, they want more opportunities,
more progression, and more chances
at development. Creating individual
development plans could be the first
step in developing employees to create
a development plan. It is important to
sit down with the employee and discuss
individual interests and career goals.
Such a conversation will help identify
the developmental activities that
individuals should be undertaking.
After all, not everyone shares the same
goals or has the same perspective
about what they want to achieve in
their career.

Industry Practice: Hyatt group
of hotels
Hyatt’s high employee retention and

long tenures speak volumes in an
industry known for high employee
turnover. The focus on employee
development and promoting from
within plays a large part in this. Another
interesting practice, connected to
development, is how they empower
their employees (whom they call
associates), to listen carefully to each
other and guests, to be able to solve
problems and create new solutions,
rather than following scripts of what
to do.

Hygiene Factor 3:
Personalization
One thing Millennials are used to is
individuality. They have grown up in a
culture, which prizes nonconformity,
and they have carried this belief over
to their working lives. As employees
that value themselves as individual
talents, they expect an equally
personalized form of feedback that
addresses their strengths and
weaknesses. They also expect this from
the people they know; with 80%
Millennials saying they were seeking
regular feedback from their managers.
Such a personal and individual type of

recognition is designed to
simultaneously deliver feedback and
coaching. 95% of millennial employees
said they would work even harder if
they had learnt how their task
contributed to the company’s larger
strategy.

Industry Practice: Legal
Monkeys
This legal record management
company established a simpler, smaller
way to show employees that their hard
work is valued. The Appreciation Board
is a glass picture frame, on which
employees can write a note using a
marker, and present it to their
colleague to whom they want to show
appreciation to. Whoever receives the
board is free to keep it on display on
their desk, until they are ready to pass
it on to someone else, with each
achievement also being posted on the
company’s Facebook page to increase
visibility outside of the team.

Hygiene Factor 4: Making
the Voice Work
These days, Millennials do not just have
to agree to their job role, they also

“Building and nurturing a great work culture and environment where everyone

finds a place to bloom, every day is special, everything is learning and everyone

is involved is an achievement par excellence. The environment where employees

get excited about the organisation and feel proud of, can be created only by

enthusiastic and highly energized people who derive enjoyment from their work

and also make it a pleasure for those whom they work with. Such an engaged

workforce is the real asset of any organisation and drives it to a position of

invincibility. I am strongly convinced that the Human Resource team plays the lead

role in driving this thought process and in inculcating this as the credo of the

organisation. Experience is the edifice of every relationship and relationship is the

anvil of engagement. Furthermore, promoting and fostering strong employer-

employee relationship is fundamental to driving a great place to work experience.

The general understanding and nuances of employer-employee relations have

gone through a sea change in the recent years, thanks to a lot of progressive

thinking in Human Resource management (HRM). A strong employee employer

relationship is no longer seen as state of ‘peaceful working’, rather is a platform

for co-creating business and individual success. Respecting and valuing the

unique flavour and strength of every employee, and binding them through a

common shared vision and purpose is quintessential to forging

the said connect. A work culture that has elements of

collaboration, supportiveness, result orientation and respect

cannot but be strongly bonded.”

JOY GEORGE

Vice President – Human Resources

CDK Global (India)

C O V E R S T O R Y

18 � March 2018 www.humancapitalonline.com ◆

have to agree to the company.
Millennials are a generation who are
deeply socially aware, and will often
prioritize a company whose social
innovations they agree with, over one
with which they do not. Combined
with the fact that they are some of
the most educated employees in the
workforce, companies should strive
to let Millennials in on company
decisions as a means of recognition.
This does not have to be anything
very significant; simple things like the
company’s charitable decisions,
allowing them to choose their own
rewards allows Millennial employees
to productively exercise their opinion.
Removing barriers is a key to listening
to employees. Many organisations are
rigid in their organisational structure
and processes, which can make it
challenging to implement some cross-
functional development and facilitate
dynamic growth and high-
performance training. It is up to the
leadership to bridge the silos, knock
down walls, and design a system, that
encourages a fluid approach to learning
and working.

Industry Practice: Virgin
This multi-industry organisation has a
habit of listening to its employees, to

show that they are valued, to listen to
their opinions, and caring for their
ideas, having healthy debates and
continuously innovating. It is a win-
win; the organisation keeps learning,
and employees feel important and
engage with the organisation.

Hygiene Factor 5: Real-Time
Recognition
Millennials experience a culture of
instant gratification which is vastly
dissimilar from what the other
generations have experienced. Fuelled
by familiarity with digital media,
Millennials are most accustomed to
instantaneous reactions, and they
anticipate the same at their workplace.
Standardized recognition methods such
as annual engagement surveys are
therefore failing to resonate with
Millennials; since they are clunky,
lengthy, and do not resolve issues in
limited time. Instead, try investing in
pulse surveys that are short, powerful
and are issued frequently enough so
that you can resolve issues closer to
their emergence. This is an easy way
to recognize millennial employees, as
it specifically addresses their individual
needs and gives them a clear channel
for communication in the company.
Digital media is also extremely useful

in providing a platform for real-time
recognition. As Millennials are more
accustomed to a work life, which bleeds
into their home, companies are no
longer restricted to communication
within a strict 9-5 time frame to provide
their feedback.

Industry Practice: HCL
Technologies
HCL Technologies has started a
Happiness Index, an analytics-based
platform where people respond to a
set of statements, which helps
determine the mood of the
organisation. The system is designed
to automatically push out a short
survey to anyone who has undergone
a change of some sort. This could be
a new manager, appraisal, end of a
project etc.

Activities for enhancing
Employee Engagement
Virtual surveys: There are multiple
applications and systems that can be
used to hold online surveys for the
team members. By conducting a poll,
you can learn and analyse their
character, attitudes, patterns of
behaviour, as well as personal
preferences.
V irtual coffee break: While team
members cannot always hang out
together after work, you can still invite
them for a virtual coffee break. These
days, most public areas offer good Wi-
Fi connection, including a coffee shop.
Online gaming: Believe it or not,
playing games together can boost
teamwork in virtual teams. To
encourage healthy competition,
managers can invite their teams to play
the same online games. Not only is
this fun, it also helps smoothen the
flow of communication and improve
overall bonding to build camaraderie.
Various games available on the Internet
can be used, or even custom games
such as trivia questions related to the
business can be developed.
Encourage sharing: People cannot
always be 100 percent at work. When
we find a co-worker who does not
appear lively while responding to a
chat, as usual, there might be
something going on with them. In such
situations, we need to take some time
to put the business aside and learn
what is happening with them.
Use Social Media: While it is true that

Employee engagement is an emotional state where employees feel passionate,

energetic, and committed to their work. Thats why Employee Engagement is &

always will be the very high priority for HR department, as it leads to high

productivity, positivity and; it creates a happy environment at work. It even helps

employees to do their job effectively. Employee engagement is a very powerful

concept and; every organisation should be more focused on increasing employee

engagement activities, as its directly related to employee performance &

organisation growth. Following of the techniques that will help in employee

engagement:
� Create a fun work Culture, as fun workplace make happier employee.
� Make a culture where employees can respect their work life & personal life

both.
� Invest in both internal and external development for employees professional

growth.
� Ensure that their development is linked to organisation goal and they should

clearly be able to see where their development plan is

taking them.
� Take an active interest in employee well-being.
� Hold regular employee engagement programmes, it will

help build bridges between peers across all departments.

AKANSHA TRIPATHI

HR Head, Xapads Media.

COVER STORY

www.humancapitalonline.com◆ March 2018 � 19

we should draw clear lines of
separation between the working and
private life, it never hurts to add co-
workers on the friends list on social
media. Through social platforms like
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Path,
we can gather more information about
the people we are working with.
Making recognition personal: The
most successful recognition is highly
personal. The value of highly
personalized rewards cannot be
understated, even in the case of those
tenure-based anniversary gifts. It is
also a great opportunity to reinforce
the value of sticking around for a long
time to the employees that the reward
was chosen with them in mind, or
which they can look forward to, which
works as a great motivator to keep
going during moments of low-morale.
On the other hand, having a
recognition system that stacks
employees against each other does
more harm than good. While
competing for points might motivate
the top performers to try even harder,
it can be demoralizing for those at the
bottom of the competition, and even
make employees to act poorly in order
to win.
Sounding the death knell to annual
surveys: Having a social engagement
strategy means being more
communicative with employees, and
inviting conversation about the
concerns or suggestions that they have.
In that vein, annual surveys, which
have been on the decline for years, are
really the last lingering relic of a time
where feedback was barely solicited,
and almost always never acted upon.
Employers who are committed to
collecting continuous, ongoing
feedback, and acting on it, then moving
past the annual survey into something
more real-time and iterative will
facilitate that.

Contemporary ways of
measuring Employee
Engagement
Matching up to the engagement
expectations of the hygiene factors of
generation Z and millennials, employee
engagement programmes are now built
on smart cloud data and analytics that
is measuring the employee pulse in
real time. WorldatWork, a global human
resources foundation, divulged the
findings of a study in which 54 percent

of employees said that short-term
incentives have a high impact on
engagement, while only 32 percent
cited long-term incentives. Several
companies are helping workplaces
revamp the way they reward their
employees, trading company coffee
mugs against 6-month memberships
to a local gym. Options as such, permit
the managers to hand out employee
perks online in real time, and some
also add these on the social media
platform so that the team can openly
thank their colleagues for a job well
done. Certain critical aspects that are

should occur across the entire
organisation. Develop a strategy that
encourages peer-to-peer recognition
and feedback, allowing employees to
recognize both individual and team
accomplishments. In most cases, real-
time recognition is more meaningful
than the feedback employees receive
through annual performance
conversations. However, too much
recognition can be a bad thing if it is
not linked to achievements and
contributions.

Making recognition simple and
aligned with company values: There is

“The role of employee engagement is critical for business process services

organisations like ours. As our people strive to delight customers by doing a lot

of knowledge driven processing, engagement events provide the much-needed

breather. While there is the fun@work aspect of engagement activities, the real

benefit comes in the form on enhanced bonding levels between team members,

and people leaders, as well as long term benefits such as loyalty and commitment.

We strongly believe that engaging employees is the job role of each people leader

and have created 15 clubs on topics as diverse as health and wellness, sports,

music, human resources, coding as a hobby, and innovation. These interest

based groups or clubs as we call them create a platform for

like-minded individuals to come together and builds a stronger

association with employees, besides building our employer

brand.”

JACOB JESUROON

Vice President and Head

People Function, Access Healthcare

Like Millennials, Gen Z is a cohort of
digital natives; they have had the
technology and the many forms of

communication since birth. They are used to
instant access to information, and, like their older
Gen Y counterparts, they are continually
processing information. Like Millennials, they
prefer to solve their own problems, and will turn
to YouTube or other video platforms for tutorials
to troubleshoot prior to seeking assistance.”

“

needed to be taken into consideration
while designing a new age employee
engagement plans are: –

Encouraging multidirectional
feedback and recognition: Recognition

nothing better than the good old face-
to-face recognition and an “atta-boy!”
Complicated programmes and
technologies are disincentives for real-
time recognition. User-friendly mobile

C O V E R S T O R Y

20 � March 2018 www.humancapitalonline.com ◆

and social tools make recognition
simple. Some platforms also integrate
with other technologies to improve
manager visibility to feedback for
coaching conversations. Employee
recognition programmes should align
with company values and business
objectives.

Working towards succession
planning for top performers: In
addition to recognition, employees
want to know if you are invested in
their careers. Recognition programmes
are a great starting point for
conversations on career growth. After
recognizing employees for hard work
and positive results, managers can
collaborate with them on a plan for
taking the next step in their career.

The platter of Employee
Engagement tools
When managers and owners are the
sole distributors of recognition and
rewards, companies put themselves at
a disadvantage. Siloed walls need to be
torn down. During times of growth
and diversification, it is very easy for
departments to come with big walls;
adding designers, developers, coders,
senior staff and recent graduates, while
an array of backgrounds and
personalities make it difficult to be
highly engaged with everyone.

Connecting new hires to the company
culture and ethos can also prove to be
more difficult. The toxicity mostly
stems from the underappreciated.
Feeling valued, wanted, appreciated,
etc., at one’s job is not some new age,
entitled generational issue. It is valid
across the board. All human beings do
their best when they feel fulfilled, and
part of feeling fulfilled is in knowing
that their efforts are seen as essential
to the company.
Peoplecart: The Peoplecart platform
aligns employee teams to
organisational priorities through agile
feedback, mobile check-ins and
instant recognition. With a
comprehensive solution of
engagement surveys, recognition of
peers for demonstrating right
behaviours and values, anytime
accessibility with a gamified mobile
technology platform, real-time insights
on engagement through customizable
tools such as People Buzz, mentor
connect, idea zone, KPI gamification
and transition clubs, this engagement
platform makes a promising choice.
Officevibe: Officevibe provides a
weekly report format that is simple
and visual, and identifies the issues
specific to the workplace. Knowing
what matters to the team and where
to focus energies on has never been

easier. Officevibe goes the extra mile
to help both you and your team
improve by pairing every identified
issue with advice and strategies to
overcome it. Because, even the best
teams have room for growth and
improvement.
Quantum Workplace: Quantum
Workplace provides an all-in-one
employee engagement software that
makes managers the central drivers of
workplace culture. Quantum
Workplaces technology gives team
leaders direct access to employee
feedback and personalized real-time
insights, so that they can make work
better every day. The software includes
features such as surveys, goals,
recognition, feedback, one-on-one, and
alerts providing a powerful solution for
team engagement and improvement.

The Platter of Reward Tools
As HR practitioners choose from the
platter of tools now available, an
important question they should answer
is “what they want out of the
programme.” While people should be
able to say thank you to each other,
rewards need to be aligned towards the
direction the company wants to go.

YouEarnedIt
This social-media based recognition
programme allows the entire team
award points to their colleagues; these
points can then be redeemed for a
variety of different rewards. They
provide a curated master catalogue of
gift cards from top retailers and
donations to a va

Journal

Visualisation Basics: Introduction to Tableau

Tutorial 1| Week 1

BUSMGT 708: Communicating Business Insights

Title Slide

Introduction – Lab’s format

Data Culture

Tableau installation

Introduction to Tableau

Tableau Tools

Tableau Interface

Connecting with databases

Data Connection: Live vs extract

Tableau Public

Contents

Table of Contents

Lab Format

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

Learn

Practices

Deliver

Data Culture

What is data culture?

A Data Culture is the collective behaviors and beliefs of people who value, practice, and encourage the use of data to improve decision-making. As a result, data is woven into the operations, mindset, and identity of an organization. A Data Culture equips everyone in your organization with the insights they need to be truly data-driven, tackling your most complex business challenges.

Practice data-driven behaviors – Align data and analytics to business outcomes.

Value strategic data use – Prioritize data in decision-making and business processes.

Encourage sharing & community -Unite over a shared mission to lead with data.

IDC Whitepaper, Sponsored By Tableau, How Data Culture Fuels Business Value In Data-driven Organizations, Doc. #Us47605621, May 2021.

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

https://www.tableau.com/why-tableau/data-culture

https://www.tableau.com/sites/default/files/2021-05/Tableau_WhitePaper_US47605621_FINAL-2.pdf

Data-Driven Organization

83% of CEOs want a data-driven organization

87% of CXOs prioritize becoming an intelligent enterprise

74% require data in decision-making

*IDC is International Data Corporation – a global market intelligence firm.

According to IDC survey research, organizations with strong Data Cultures were more likely than their peers to be data-driven, using data in three distinct ways:

Integrated into Daily Meetings and Discussions

When Recommending Next Steps or Actions

To Support Major Decisions

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

Why Tableau?

Tableau is a visual analytics platform transforming the way we use data to solve problems—empowering people and organizations to make the most of their data.

Tableau helps people and organizations be more data-driven.

Tableau disrupted business intelligence with intuitive, visual analytics for everyone.

Tableau helps people drive change with data.

https://www.tableau.com/why-tableau/what-is-tableau

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

Tableau Tools

Tableau Prep: Prepare, clean, and format data to make analysis easier.

Tableau Desktop: Connect to data and start seeing what the data has to say.

Tableau Server: Share and store data on this web-based, customer-hosted platform.

Tableau Online: Share and store data in the cloud with this web-based, Tableau-hosted platform.

Tableau Public: Tableau Public is a free platform to publicly share and explore data visualizations online.The Tableau Community create, share data, visualisations with Tableau Public.

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

Tableau Use

In Class

Learn, Practice, Create, Share

For Fun

Unleash your creativity with beautiful visualizations on topics you are passionate about. Instagram data, Marvel Cinematic Universe

For Career

Tableau visualizations are your e-Portfolio

For Social Good

Make vizzes to promote a cause close to your heart such as the International Coastline
Cleanup or Gender Equality. Post your own on Tableau Public with the hashtag #VizForSocialGood.

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

Tableau Installation

Availability:

Tableau Desktop has been installed in the OGGB computer labs.

You can also get a free copy of Tableau Desktop for your own personal use.

Download the latest version of Tableau Desktop and Tableau Prep Builder

Click on the link above and select “Download Tableau Desktop” and “Download Tableau Prep Builder”. On the form, enter your school email address and enter the name of your school for Organization.

Activate with your product key: TC9N-0EE1-97D0-540C-E487

Already have a copy of Tableau Desktop installed? Update your license in the application: Help menu → Manage Product Keys

*The Tableau licenses and resources we use in this course are provided through the Tableau for Teaching program.

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

Getting started

Tableau guides you with connecting to or importing data. On the left-hand side of the screen, you will see the Connect bar.

The choices for the data types you can use in Tableau are listed under Connect.

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

Instructor: You may want to explain here that there are many file formats that contain data. But the bottom line is that Tableau and most database programs work primarily with structured data, data that is organized in rows and columns. Data can come in those rows and columns in a database management program, which works with more complex file formats, or in spreadsheet such as Excel or Google Sheets. Or, data can come in a text file (see next slide). We’ll get to more definitions of the more complex database programs later in the modules. But for now, we’ll focus on text files and spreadsheets in terms of how we import data into Tableau.

Connecting to data sources and

databases

Tableau can connect to various types of data sources including excel files, text files, PDF files, JSON files, Spatial files, statistical files, and so on.

Find list of compatible file types here: https://help.tableau.com/current/pro/desktop/en-us/exampleconnections_overview.htm

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

Connecting to Excel and Text Files

You can add different types of data formats into Tableau.

You can use excel or text file, Access or statistical files.

In Tableau Desktop, you can also connect with multiple types of data sets from your desktop, online or from tableau server set by your organization.

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

Connecting to Google Sheets

A new feature of the Tableau 10 (desktop and public) enables you to connect with live data from google sheets.

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

Connecting to Web Data Connectors

The web data connector helps to build connections with live web data. Any data to almost any data accessible over http.

You can also build your own live data sets.

These data sets are designed by individuals or organizations and may vary in their design.

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

Connecting to Spatial Files

You can create maps with geographic entities like cities, countries, postal codes, zips code etc.

To plot other geographical maps, you can use spatial files – to create maps with election districts, school zones, climate zones, conference zones etc.

You can connect to the following spatial file types:

Shapefiles,

MapInfo tables,

KML (Keyhole Markup Language) files,

GeoJSON files,

TopoJSON files, and

Esri File Geodatabases

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

Connecting to PDFs

You can connect PDFs to tableau. There might be two types of PDFs files:

Tabulated data structured: Each page will show up as separate sheets. If the data is structured in same format, you can union all pages to connect and show as a single sheet.

Unstructured tabulated data: Most PDFs are not perfectly setup as tabulated data. For this you need to select pages with tabulated data and then clean it manually

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

Data Connections: Live and Extract

Live connection. This refers to a data source that contains direct connection to underlying data, which provides real-time or near real-time data.

Extract. Extract connection is a snapshot of data. An extract (.tde or .hyper file) might be created from a static source of data, like an Excel spreadsheet. Make sure that the path to an original file stays same.

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

Users working with Tableau Desktop can publish data sources that contain extract or live connections.

Extract data is snapshot of data on a particular time or phase.

Live: With a live connection, Tableau makes queries directly against the database or other source and returns the results of the query for use in a workbook. Users can create live connections and then share them on Tableau Server so that other Tableau users can use the same data using the same connection and filtering settings. As the Tableau Server administrator, you can manage credentials and the permissions associated with the data source to control what data users can access.

Saving your work

Save a workbook – Saves all open worksheets.

Make sure to continuously saving your work.

Save a packaged workbook – Saves the workbook along with all referenced local file data sources and images into a single file.

These workbooks are saved with a .twbx file extension.

Sharing Workbooks – You can share workbooks with team mates, provided that they can access the relevant data sources that the workbook uses.

https://help.tableau.com/current/pro/desktop/en-us/save_savework.htm

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

Tableau Interface and Basics

Workspace Area

A. Workbook name. A workbook contains sheets. A sheet can be a worksheet, a dashboard, or a story.

B. Cards and shelves – Drag fields to the cards and shelves in the workspace to add data to your view.

C. Toolbar – Use the toolbar to access commands and analysis and navigation tools.

D. View – This is the canvas in the workspace where you create a visualization (also referred to as a “viz”).

E. Click this icon to go to the Start page, where you can connect to data.

F. Side Bar – In a worksheet, the side bar area contains the Data pane and the Analytics pane.

G. Click this tab to go to the Data Source page and view your data.

H. Status bar – Displays information about the current view.

I. Sheet tabs – Tabs represent each sheet in your workbook. This can include worksheets, dashboards, and stories.

https://help.tableau.com/current/pro/desktop/en-us/environment_workspace.htm

Worksheet, Dashboard

and Story

Worksheet

Dashboard

Story

Add new worksheet, dashboard, story

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

Dimensions and Measures

Dimensions

Measures

Tableau assigns each field in the data source as dimension or measure in the Data pane, depending on the type of data the field contains.

It is important to understand type of data in different columns, how tableau understood it by categorising into different pills (dimensions or measure). As it will impacts every level of functionality in the analysis, from the way the data displays to the deeply technical, behind the scenes approach to how data is processed.

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

Instructor: If you want to explain a little bit more,

Tableau is similar to Excel in that its files are called workbooks and the sheets inside the workbook are called, well, sheets. There are a few additional features as well. For example, once you have created all the sheets you want and visualized data in the sheets, you add a dashboard tab to your workbook. The dashboard is where you place your sheets and design how you want them to look. Confused? Don’t worry; it will all become clear.

Dimensions are typically those columns or fields that are text or that you are not going to do math on.

Dimensions are typically:

Discrete data, not continuous as in numbers, but there is an exception: date fields are dimensions.

Qualitative data like names, dates, places, etc.

It is shown as blue pills

Dimensions

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

Dimensions contain qualitative values (such as names, dates, or geographical data). You can use dimensions to categorize, segment, and reveal the details in your data. Dimensions affect the level of detail in the view.

Measures are data you can calculate, so the compensation and expenses are measures. Measures are continuous data.

Continuous data: quantitative data that can be measured in some way.

It is shown as green pills

Measures

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

Instructor: Once you are in the Tableau workspace, you need to explain how to navigate around a little bit. Important points you will explain are the definitions of Dimensions, Measures and the Show Me panel. Tableau is basically a drag and drop interface, meaning once your students understand the basics, they can do some ambitious data analysis and visualization.

In this class, the number of students is discrete data. There cannot be half of a student. The age of each student is continuous data. It can be any age (within the range of possible human age).

Tableau Public

Tableau Public is a free platform to publicly share and explore data visualizations online.The Tableau Community create, share data, visualisations with Tableau Public.

The Tableau Community, that you can access via Tableau Public has more than one million members, spanning over 500 user groups worldwide and our active Community Forums and programs. The Tableau Community is active, diverse, creative, and supportive of one another on and offline, sharing connections, experiences, and best practices.

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

Create Tableau Public Profile

Subscribe to “Viz of the Day”

Exercise

Travel Planner + Emissions Calculator

https://help.tableau.com/current/pro/desktop/en-us/publish_workbooks_tableaupublic.htm

Publish work on Tableau Public

To publish your workbook on Tableau Public >

Go to server > Save to Tableau Public

If you see an errors, make sure that your data connection is set as “Extract”

Save and copy the link to share with your tutors.

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

A few examples

IronViz 2021: The NYT #1 Best Sellers

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

Show during lab

Tableau Resources

The Tableau Workspace:

https://help.tableau.com/current/pro/desktop/en-us/environment_workspace.htm

Great Tableau Learning Resources:

https://www.dataplusscience.com/LearningTableau.html

Tableau Starter Kit

https://www.tableau.com/learn/starter-kits

BUSMGT 708 | Tutorial 1

Journal

Data Visualisation Types
Week 03
BUSMGT 708 Communicating Business Insights

‹#›

Learning outcomes:

By the end of this session you should be able to

Identify the most common types of business data visualisations

Know when to use them

This session is based on materials provided by Tableau for Teaching (created by Jeffrey A. Shaffer (Author – Big Book of Dashboards)).

‹#›

Agenda:

‹#›

Text based Data Visualisation

Commonly used Graphs & Charts

Critique this

-0.7%

Average Saving Rate NZ Households (2015)

http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/statistics/m6

1. Text

‹#›

2. Tables

http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/statistics/m6

‹#›

3. Word Cloud

encodes data using size of word to show comparisons which is difficult for making precise quantitative comparisons.

* Caution this chart type is not recommended.

‹#›

Text based Data Visualisation

Commonly used Graphs & Charts

Critique this

4. Bar Chart

encodes data using height/length of bar and shows categorical comparisons.

5. Stacked Bar Chart

encodes data using height or length of bar and color by segment and shows categorical and part-to-whole comparisons.

* Caution be careful not to slice stacked charts into too many segments.

6. Diverging Bar Chart

encodes data using height/length of bar diverging from a midpoint to show categorical comparisons.

‹#›

encodes data using height or length of bar and color by segment and shows categorical and part-to-whole comparisons.

encodes data using height/length of bar and shows categorical comparisons

‹#›

NZ Herald 1 August

‹#›

7. Line Chart

encodes data using position and often shows trend over time.

8. Histogram

encodes data using height and shows a distribution.

9. Sparkline/Sparkbar

encodes data using position (line) or height/length (bar) in a small, word-sized graphic.

‹#›

https://www.tableau.com/sites/default/files/media/which_chart_v6_final_0.pdf

Line Charts

https://www.tableau.com/sites/default/files/media/which_chart_v6_final_0.pdf

Histogram Charts

‹#›

Line (filled) Charts – Area Chart

Combined Line Charts

https://www.tableau.com/sites/default/files/media/which_chart_v6_final_0.pdf

‹#›

Sparklines

Small, high-resolution graphics embedded in a context of words, numbers, images.

Sparklines are data-intense, design-simple, word-sized graphics.

Invented by Edward Tufte

Source: https://bestmobileappawards.com/app-submission/my-cast-weather

Sparktweets

‹#›

10. Scatter Plot

encodes data using position to show the relationship between two variables. Size can also be used to show a secondary comparison.

11. Dot Plot

encodes data using position to show the comparisons.

12. Dot Plot with Jitter

encodes data using position to show comparisons but offsets points randomly to reduce overlap of dots.

‹#›

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17194105/how-can-i-color-dots-in-a-xy-scatterplot-according-to-column-value

https://www.tableau.com/sites/default/files/media/which_chart_v6_final_0.pdf

Scatter Plots

‹#›

Source: http://tabsoft.co/2u4WUyU

‹#›

13. Box and Whiskers or Box Plot (Tukey)

encodes data using position and height/length to show the distribution of the data.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_density_function#/media/File:Boxplot_vs_PDF.svg

‹#›

Box and Whiskers or Box Plot (Tukey)

‹#›

14. Bullet Graph

encodes data using length/height, position and color to show actual compared to target and performance bands.

Source: Public Domain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_graph#/media/File:Bullet_graphs_multiple.png

‹#›

Bullet Graph (invented by Stephen Few)

Source: Public Domain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_graph#/media/File:Bullet_graphs_multiple.png

‹#›

15. Gantt Chart

encodes data using length and position to show amount of work completed in segments of time.

16. Waterfall Chart

encodes data using height and often color to show increase and decrease between time periods or categories.

‹#›

https://www.tableau.com/learn/articles/how-to/gantt-chart

Gantt Chart

Waterfall Chart

‹#›

17. Highlight Table

encodes a data table using color to highlight the differences in the table numbers.

18. Heat Map

encodes a data table using color to highlight the differences in the table without numbers.

‹#›

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/06/opinion/working-class-death-rate.html

https://www.tableau.com/sites/default/files/media/which_chart_v6_final_0.pdf

Highlighted Table

Heat Map

‹#›

19. Treemap

encodes data using size and color and is useful for hierarchical data or when there are a very large number of categories to compare.

‹#›

20. Lollipop Chart

encodes data using height or length of bar and shows categorical comparisons.

21. Slopegraph

encodes data using position to show quantitative comparison or rank, typically between two time periods.

‹#›

Slopegraph

‹#›

22. Choropleth Map (Shaded Map)

encodes data using color and position to show data geographically.

23. Symbol Map (Dot Map)

encodes data using position to show data geographically and can also use size to show quantitative data.

‹#›

Small Multiples

Invented by Edward Tufte

“Illustrations of postage-stamp size are indexed by category or a label, sequenced over time like the frames of a movie, or ordered by a quantitative variable not used in the single image itself.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/07/20/us/drought-footprint.html

‹#›

24. Bubble Chart

encodes data using size of circle to show comparisons which is difficult for making precise quantitative comparisons.

26. Concentric Circles

encodes data using arc and area to show comparisons but problematic for many reasons.

* Caution this chart type is not recommended.

25. Donut Chart

encodes data using arc and area to show a part-to-whole comparison but problematic for many reasons.

27. Pie Chart

encodes data using angle, area and arc to show a part-to-whole comparison but problematic for many reasons.

‹#›

Don’t Use Pie Charts

If you must break Rule #1 then:

Make sure it adds up 100%

Only a few categories

Start at noon and move clockwise

Largest to Smallest Values

Add Labels for %

Avoid 3D

Keep it Simple

General Rules for Pie Charts

‹#›

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/tomholl/2011/03/27/creating-multi-series-bubble-charts-in-excel/

https://www.tableau.com/sites/default/files/media/which_chart_v6_final_0.pdf

Bubble Charts

‹#›

Girl Scout Cookie Sales

Photo: Celine Grouard

Source: www.wired.com/magazine/2011/08/st_datagirlscoutcookies

‹#›

Pie Charts on a Map

‹#›

28. Sankey Chart

Where do Sankey diagrams work? Data Revelations

‹#›

A sankey diagram is a visualization used to depict a flow from one set of values to another. The things being connected are called nodes and the connections are called links.

https://github.com/Financial-Times/chart-doctor/tree/main/visual-vocabulary

‹#›

Ultimate Resource:

Financial Times Visual Vocabulary: Tableau Edition

http://www.vizwiz.com/2018/07/visual-vocabulary.html

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/andy.kriebel/viz/VisualVocabulary/VisualVocabulary

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/kevin.flerlage/viz/TheTableauChartCatalog/TableauChartExamples

‹#›

Text based Data Visualisation

Commonly used Graphs & Charts

Critique This

Critique this:

‹#›

Source: https://eagereyes.org/criticism/march-chart-madness

Critique this:

‹#›

Critique this:

https://www.threenow.co.nz/shows/newshub-6pm/122217

‹#›

Critique this:

‹#›

Most

Least

Some

Few

Many

Journal

Narrative structures
Week 07 Lecture Session
BUSMGT 708 Communicating Business Insights

Learning outcomes:

By the end of this session you should be able to

Articulate why stories are the best method to convey information

Understand the distinct elements of story telling

Apply the elements of story telling to a data visualisation project

Materials based on Tableau resources created by:

Jeffrey Shaffer

Agenda:

Owning Your Data Story

Elements of Storytelling

Breakdown of a talk

Redesign of a Viz

Key Takeaways

Owning Your Data Story

Elements of Storytelling

Breakdown of a talk

Redesign of a Viz

Key Takeaways

Information Glut

90% of surveyed professionals admit to having
thrown away information without reading it.

The average consumer processes
100,500 digital words daily

Source: measuring consumer Information
(International Journal of Communication)

“There is no such thing as information overload.

There is only bad design.”

-Edward Tufte

Kinds of data stories

Story about the data

Quality, source etc.

Story in the data

What the story reveals about the world, what happened, why

Story of the data journey

How we got it.

Larry Birnbaum (3rd Symposium on Storytelling with Data)

STORIES

MATH

Owning Your Data Story

Elements of Storytelling

Breakdown of a talk

Redesign of a Viz

Key Takeaways

Attract

Engage

Punchline

Laws of Attraction

Identify theme

Know your audience

Determine purpose

Set the tone

Keep it simple

Interactive vs. non-interactive

Choice of visualizations

Pay attention to size, colors, space

Purposeful arrangement

Walk audience through the story (how you deliver)

Rules of Engagement

Deliver the Punchline

Conclude clearly

Place your conclusion strategically

Chronologically

Lead with the punchline

Make a lasting impression

Don’t give them 4, give them 2+2

“We are born problem solvers…”

“Don’t give your audience 4, give them 2 + 2…”

Andrew Stanton, Director at Pixar

Grice’s Maxims for effective communication

The maxim of quantity, where one tries to be as informative as one possibly can, and gives as much information as is needed, and no more.

The maxim of quality, where one tries to be truthful, and does not give information that is false or that is not supported by evidence.

The maxim of relation, where one tries to be relevant, and says things that are pertinent to the discussion.

The maxim of manner, when one tries to be as clear, as brief, and as orderly as one can in what one says, and where one avoids obscurity and ambiguity.

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/dravling/grice.html

Owning Your Data Story

Elements of Storytelling

Breakdown of a talk

Redesign of a Viz

Key Takeaways

“The Best Stats You’ve Ever Seen”

https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen

Hans Rosling Presentation Breakdown

Attract

Engage

Punchline

Hans Rosling Presentation Breakdown

Attract

Engage

Punchline

Are we really not smarter than chimpanzees?

Debunk third world myths

Show why preconceived notions are wrong

Animation of countries’ progress over the course of 200 years

Walks us through journey

Highlight key historical events that audience may relate to

We need to have open, searchable databases to allow people to see reality

Promote a fact-based view of the world

“Numbers have an important story to tell. They rely on you to give them a clear and convincing voice.”

Stephen Few

Owning Your Data Story

Elements of Storytelling

Breakdown of a talk

Redesign of a Viz

Key Takeaways

Laws of Attraction

Identify theme

Know your audience

Determine purpose

Set the tone

Keep it simple

Interactive vs. non-interactive

Choice of visualizations

Pay attention to size, colors, space

Purposeful arrangement

Walk audience through the story (how you deliver)

Rules of Engagement

Deliver the Punchline

Conclude clearly

Place your conclusion strategically

Chronologically

Lead with the punchline

Make a lasting impression

In Class Demo:
Redesign this vis

Owning Your Data Story

Elements of Storytelling

Breakdown of a talk

Redesign of a Viz

Key Takeaways

Attract

Engage

Punchline

Journal

Overview:

One of the objectives of this course is to help you think about how you interact with and respond to data you encounter and the way in which it is communicated to you. This assessment provides you the opportunity to systematically think about each topic that we consider in class, reflecting on what you have learned, what you observe in the world around you and how you will use these learnings in the future.

Required:

At the end of the course, you will complete a 1000-1200 word course reflection, integrating the reflections from your weekly submissions.

This will be worth 15.5% of your final grade.

In this final reflection you need to discuss THREE key takeaways for you from this course with specific reference to how you will act on these takeaways in the short or long term. Note that a good review will also articulate whether you feel you have achieved the course learning outcomes.

There is no peer review required for this final submission.

Course Learning outcomes addressed:

· Create a data visualisation, from a provided dataset, that delivers a compelling narrative to a specified audience.

· Create data visualisations in a data visualisation tool.

· Evaluate, critique, and suggest improvements to, visual representations of data.

· Identify, and suggest improvements to, unethical uses of data visualisations in business settings.

· Design, and deliver effective, engaging presentations to a live audience that carefully consider the audience’s perspective and address their needs.

Journal

Ethics in Data Visualisation
Week 07
BUSMGT 708 Communicating Business Insights

Learning outcomes:

By the end of this session you should be able to

Recognise common issues that may imply a problem with a chart

Agenda:

Overview – why do we lie?

How To Spot Common Visualisation Lies

Break the Gestalt

Overview – why do we lie?

How To Spot Common Visualisation Lies

Break the Gestalt

This Map of the World Just Won Japan’s Prestigious Design Award

https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/24-09-2017/a-better-visual-breakdown-of-the-2017-election-results/

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/election-results

Overview – why do we lie?

How To Spot Common Visualisation Lies

Break the Gestalt

How to spot lies:

Trucated Axis

Dual Axes

It does not add up

Seeing only in absolutes

Limited Scope

Odd Choice of Binning

Area Sized by a Single Dimension

Extra Dimension Just Because

Source: https://flowingdata.com/2017/02/09/how-to-spot-visualization-lies/

Nathan Yau

How to spot lies: Truncated Axis

Source: https://flowingdata.com/2017/02/09/how-to-spot-visualization-lies/

How to spot lies: Truncated Axis

Source: https://blog.heapanalytics.com/how-to-lie-with-data-visualization/

How to spot lies: Truncated Axis

Source: https://tradingeconomics.com/new-zealand/gdp

How to spot lies: Dual Axes

Source: https://flowingdata.com/2017/02/09/how-to-spot-visualization-lies/

How to spot lies: Dual Axes

Source: http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

How to spot lies: It does not add up

Source: https://flowingdata.com/2017/02/09/how-to-spot-visualization-lies/

How to spot lies: It does not add up

Source: https://flowingdata.com/2017/02/09/how-to-spot-visualization-lies/

How to spot lies: Seeing only in absolutes

Source: https://flowingdata.com/2017/02/09/how-to-spot-visualization-lies/

5 Ways Writers Use Misleading Graphs To Manipulate You [INFOGRAPHIC]

How to spot lies: Seeing only in absolutes

Source: https://xkcd.com/1138/

How to spot lies: Limited Scope

Source: https://flowingdata.com/2017/02/09/how-to-spot-visualization-lies/

How to spot lies: Limited Scope

Source: https://flowingdata.com/2017/02/09/how-to-spot-visualization-lies/

How to spot lies: Odd Choice of Binning

Source: https://flowingdata.com/2017/02/09/how-to-spot-visualization-lies/

5 Ways Writers Use Misleading Graphs To Manipulate You [INFOGRAPHIC]

How to spot lies: Area sized by a single dimension

Source: https://flowingdata.com/2017/02/09/how-to-spot-visualization-lies/

How to spot lies: Area sized by a single dimension

Source: https://www.good.is/infographics/

How to spot lies: Extra dimensions

Source: https://flowingdata.com/2017/02/09/how-to-spot-visualization-lies/

How to spot lies: Cumulative Graphs

Source: https://blog.heapanalytics.com/how-to-lie-with-data-visualization/

How to spot lies: Cumulative Graphs

Source: https://blog.heapanalytics.com/how-to-lie-with-data-visualization/

https://qz.com/122921/the-chart-tim-cook-doesnt-want-you-to-see/

Overview – why do we lie?

How To Spot Common Visualisation Lies

Break the Gestalt

5 Ways Writers Use Misleading Graphs To Manipulate You [INFOGRAPHIC]

https://twitter.com/DataRemixed/status/1494525974980878340/photo/1

Journal

Step 1: Prepare a shortened version of your Final Paper (at least four pages) by including the following:

Introduction paragraph and thesis statement you developed for your Week 3 Assignment.
Background information of the global societal issue you have chosen.
Brief argument supporting at least two solutions to the global societal issue.
Conclusion paragraph.
Must document any information used from at least five scholarly sources in APA style as outlined in the University of Arizona Global Campus Writing Center’s Citing Within Your Paper (Links to an external site.) Note that you will need at least eight scholarly sources for your Final Paper in Week 5.

Step 2: After you have completed a rough draft of your paper, submit that draft to the University of Arizona Global Campus Writing Center by using the instructions found in the Paper Review (Links to an external site.) page. Your paper will be returned within 24 hours, so give yourself enough time to complete and submit it prior to the due date.

Reflect: Carefully review the summary feedback found in the email from the tutor and the margin comments that you see on your returned paper. Consider each of the suggestions provided to help you to revise your paper.

Write:

What You Need to Submit to Waypoint:

Upload the document that contains the feedback from the Writing Center specialist.
Submit the journal assignment answering the following questions in at least 400 words:
- Identify the top three issues your writing specialist focused on in your rough draft (e.g., paragraph structure, proper use of quotations, thesis statement, etc.).
  - In what ways were those issues surprising?
- Describe what you learned from some of the feedback your writing specialist provided as explanations.
  - Was this feedback helpful?
- Evaluate the usefulness of the paper review tool.
  - In what ways did this activity improve your academic writing skills?
  - Will you use the University of Arizona Global Campus Writing Center to review your work in the future? Why or why not?
- Identify Writing Center Video Tutorials (Links to an external site.) that you find most useful and explain why. Also, identify tutorial(s) you found least useful and explain why.

The journal part of the assignment does not need to be formatted in APA style; however, correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation is required.

journal

2018, Vol. 32, No. 4, 538–543 0893-3200/18/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/fam0000400

BRIEF REPORT

Social Support and Relationship Satisfaction in Bipolar Disorder

Grace B. Boyers and Lorelei Simpson Rowe

Southern Methodist University

Social support is positively associated with individual well-being, particularly if an intimate partner provides that support. However, despite evidence that individuals with bipolar disorder (BPD) are at high risk for relationship discord and are especially vulnerable to low or inadequate social support, little research has explored the relationship between social support and relationship quality among couples in which a partner has BPD. The current study addresses this gap in the literature by examining the association between social support and relationship satisfaction in a weekly diary study. Thirty-eight opposite-sex couples who were married or living together for at least one year and in which one partner met diagnostic criteria for BPD completed up to 26 weekly diaries measuring social support and relationship satisfaction, as well as psychiatric symptoms. Results revealed that greater social support on average was associated with higher average relationship satisfaction for individuals with BPD and their partners, and that more support than usual in any given week was associated with higher relationship satisfaction that week. The converse was also true, with greater-than-average relationship satisfaction and more satisfaction than usual associated with greater social support. The results emphasize the week-to-week variability of social support and relationship satisfaction and the probable reciprocal relationship between support and satisfaction among couples in which a partner has BPD. Thus, social support may be important for maintaining relationship satisfaction and vice versa, even after controlling for concurrent mood symptoms.

ThisdocumentiscopyrightedbytheAmericanPsychologicalAssociationoroneofitsalliedpublishers.

Thisarticleisintendedsolelyforthepersonaluseoftheindividualuserandisnottobedisseminatedbroadly.

Keywords: bipolar disorder, marriage, social support, longitudinal, relationship satisfaction

Bipolar disorder (BPD) is a severe and chronic illness charac- of individuals with BPD are also at risk for social, occupational, terized by extreme mood shifts (American Psychiatric Association, and financial distress, and symptoms of depression and anxiety 2000) and impairment in occupational and social functioning, even (Lam et al., 2005). The high risk for individual and couple distress between affective episodes (Fagiolini et al., 2005; Judd & Akiskal, has led to calls to investigate factors that may buffer the negative 2003). Individuals with BPD are less likely to marry or live with effects of illness and improve functioning among individuals with a romantic partner, and those who do are at higher risk for BPD and their partners (Reinares et al., 2006).

relationship distress and dissolution compared to individuals with One potential buffering factor is social support. Multiple studies other psychiatric disorders and those without mental illness (Co- with nonclinical samples have demonstrated a positive association ryell et al., 1993; Judd & Akiskal, 2003; Whisman, 2007). Rela- between social support and individual well-being (for a review, see tionship dysfunction has been attributed to a number of factors, Cohen & Wills, 1985), particularly when an intimate partner is the including patient mood symptoms (e.g., Lam, Donaldson, Brown, support provider (e.g., Beach, Martin, Blum, & Roman, 1993). & Malliaris, 2005), caregiver burden (Reinares et al., 2006), and

This effect has been documented with both self-report and ob-

deficits in psychosocial functioning (Coryell et al., 1993). Partners

served data, concurrently and over time (e.g., Cutrona & Suhr, 1994; Sullivan, Pasch, Johnson, & Bradbury, 2010). Moreover, social support appears to buffer the effects of individual and

couple-level stress on individual and relationship functioning

Grace B. Boyers and Lorelei Simpson Rowe, Department of Psychology, Southern Methodist University.

The analyses presented in this study were conducted in fulfillment of Grace B. Boyers’s master’s thesis and have not previously been published.

Previous versions of the analyses presented in this study were presented as a poster at the Annual Conference of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies in November 2015 and as a paper at the Annual Conference of the Southwestern Psychological Association in April 2016. Other analyses using this data set were presented in Rowe and Miller Morris (2012).

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Lorelei Simpson Rowe, Department of Psychology, Southern Methodist University, P.O. Box 750442, Dallas, TX 75275-0442. E-mail:

lsimpson@smu.edu

(Bodenmann, 1995) and facilitate caring and intimacy (Cohen & Wills, 1985). This research is consistent with the intimacy process model (Reis & Patrick, 1996), which suggests that intimacy develops through exchanges that convey validation and understanding, especially in response to expressions of vulnerability. In contrast, inadequate or miscarried social support attempts are associated with declines in relationship quality over time (e.g., Brock & Lawrence, 2009).

For individuals with BPD, lack of social support (in either the quality or the number of supportive relationships) is associated with lower medication compliance and greater stress (e.g., Kulhara, Basu, Mattoo, Sharan, & Chopra, 1999). In contrast, the

538

RELATIONSHIP SATISFACTION IN BPD 539

presence of support predicts longer time between recurrence of affective episodes (Cohen, Hammen, Henry, & Daley, 2004; Johnson, Lundström, Åberg-Wistedt, & Mathé, 2003) and quicker recovery from mood episodes (Johnson, Winett, Meyer, Greenhouse, & Miller, 1999). However, no known research has directly studied the association between social support and relationship satisfaction within the context of BPD. This is particularly important because, although individuals with BPD have a high need for social support, they often do not receive it (Coryell et al., 1993). Likewise, their partners receive less social support than partners of individuals without mental illness; this has been attributed to limited social activities as well as lower support from the partner with BPD (Dore & Romans, 2001). In the current study, we examine the association between social support and relationship satisfaction among individuals with BPD and their intimate partners using an intensive longitudinal diary method. This method permits evaluation of fluctuation of variables over time, whereas the existing, predominantly cross-sectional research does not. That is, we can assess the overall association between relationship satisfaction and social support as well as the association between fluctuations in each variable.

Second, we focus on each participant’s report of emotional support they received from their partner (e.g., expressions of care and understanding). We focus on perceived social support because associations between one partner’s report of support provision and the other’s report of support receipt are often weak (Haber, Cohen, Lucas, & Baltes, 2007), reflecting the subjective nature of social support and variability in support provision skill (Howland & Simpson, 2010). That is, one partner may engage in actions intended to be supportive that the other partner does not perceive as helpful, which can decrease relationship satisfaction (Bolger & Amarel, 2007). We also focus on emotional support, specifically, because it is more universally acceptable than instrumental support (i.e., active assistance; Cutrona & Suhr, 1992).

We examined weekly reports of partner provision of social support from individuals with BPD and their partners, hypothesizing that (a) individuals with BPD would report receiving more support than would their partners. We also tested the hypotheses that (b) support would be positively associated with relationship satisfaction on average and (c) support in any given week would be positively associated with relationship satisfaction in that week. Finally, because there is reason to believe that social support and relationship satisfaction build upon each other in a reciprocal fashion (Dunkel-Schetter & Skokan, 1990), we tested the converse hypotheses that (d) relationship satisfaction would be associated with support on average and (e) satisfaction in any given week would be positively associated with support in that week. We controlled for patient and partner depressive symptoms and patient manic symptoms because own and partner symptoms correlate with relationship satisfaction and social support (Lam et al., 2005; Lee et al., 2011; Whisman, Uebelacker, & Weinstock, 2004).

Method

Participants

Thirty-eight individuals with a lifetime diagnosis of bipolar I (90%) or bipolar II (10%) disorder and their opposite sex partners participated in a 6-month weekly diary study. In 71% of cases, the individual with bipolar disorder (hereafter referred to as the patient) was female. Participants ranged in age from 25 to 64 years, with a mean age of 44 years (SD 10) for patients and 46 years (SD 11) for partners. The sample was predominantly nonHispanic White (92% of patients, 84% of partners), with the remainder identifying as Hispanic of any race (5% of patients and 8% of partners) or other (3% of patients, 8% of partners). Participants had 15 years of education on average (SD 3 years) and 50% of patients and 76% of partners were employed, with a median household income of $4,500 per month. All couples had been living together for at least 1 year, with an average relationship length of 12 years (SD 10), and 84% were married. In 76% of couples, at least one partner had a biological child (children’s age ranged from 1 to 41 years), with a mean of 2.86 children (SD

ThisdocumentiscopyrightedbytheAmericanPsychologicalAssociationoroneofitsalliedpublishers.

Thisarticleisintendedsolelyforthepersonaluseoftheindividualuserandisnottobedisseminatedbroadly.

1.66) among couples who had children.

Procedure

The study was conducted in a large southwestern city in the United States. All procedures were approved by the local institutional review board. Couples were recruited through Internet and newspaper advertisements and presentations to local mental health consumer organizations. To participate, one partner had to meet Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (DSM–IV; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) criteria for bipolar I or II disorder, and the other partner could not meet criteria for a bipolar spectrum disorder or a primary psychotic disorder. The couple had to be married and/or cohabiting for at least one year, and partners had to be between the ages of 25 and 64 years, have completed a tenth-grade education or higher, and be able to read and understand English.

After providing informed consent, participants completed a battery of questionnaires and clinical interviews (including those to confirm diagnostic eligibility) at a laboratory assessment. At the end of the assessment, participants completed the first weekly diary, described below, and received instructions for completing and returning weekly diaries for the next 6 months. Participants received $125 each ($250 per couple) in compensation for completing the initial laboratory session and $5 for each completed diary. They were asked to complete the weekly diaries independently from their partner and return them in self-addressed, stamped envelopes. To encourage timely completion of diaries, participants received payment only if the post date of the diary was within 3 days of the due date; only data from these diaries were included in analyses. Participants completed an average of 20 weekly diaries (range 2–26, SD 8), with 74% completing at least 20, 8% completing 10–20, 9% completing 5–10, and 8% completing 4 or fewer.

Measures

540 BOYERS AND SIMPSON ROWE

Diagnosis and symptoms. The Structured Clinical Interview for DSM–IV Axis I disorders, research version, patient edition (SCID-I/P; First, Spitzer, Gibbon, & Williams, 2002) was used to confirm diagnostic eligibility. The SCID was administered by clinical psychology doctoral students under the supervision of the primary investigator. Patients and their partners completed the SCID-I/P independently with different interviewers. The SCID-I/P is a reliable and well-validated diagnostic tool (e.g., First, Spitzer, Gibbon, & Williams, 2002). Interrater agreement within this study was calculated by rescoring 30% of all interviews (n 23); current mood episode ( .89), and mood diagnosis ( .83) had acceptable agreement.

Patient and partner weekly depressive symptoms were assessed with the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9; Kroenke, Spitzer, & Williams, 2001), a nine-item measure of DSM–IV depressive symptoms experienced in the past week. Symptoms were rated on a scale ranging from 0, not at all, to 3, nearly every day, with total scores ranging from 0 to 27. The PHQ-9 is well validated and reliable, with good specificity and sensitivity to change (Kroenke et al., 2001). Coefficient alpha for the first diary was .91 for patients and .88 for partners. First-week diary scores were correlated with Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (Hamilton, 1960) scores obtained at the laboratory assessment, r .67 for patients, .77 for partners, ps .001.

Patient weekly manic symptoms were measured using the Altman Self Rating Scale for Mania (ASRM; Altman, Hedeker, Peterson, & Davis, 1997), a five-item measure of manic symptoms in which participants rate symptoms on a scale ranging from 0 to 4; total scores can range from 0 to 20. The ASRM is correlated with clinician-rated measures of mania and has good reliability and specificity (Altman et al., 1997). Coefficient alpha for ASRM scores in the first diary was .89. First-week diary scores were correlated with the Young Mania Rating Scale (Young, Biggs, Ziegler, & Meyer, 1978) scores obtained at the laboratory assessment, r .77, p .001.

Relationship satisfaction. Weekly relationship satisfaction was measured by a single item, “All things considered, how happy have you felt in your relationship in the last week?” on a nine-point scale ranging from 0, very unhappy, to 8, perfectly happy. Firstweek satisfaction scores were positively correlated with selfreported relationship satisfaction at the laboratory assessment using the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (Spanier, 1976), r .46 for patients and .39 for partners, ps .05. Previous studies have documented the validity of single-item measures of constructs such as relationship closeness (Aron, Aron, & Smollan, 1992), life satisfaction (Antonucci, Lansford, & Akiyama, 2001), and wellbeing (Pavot & Diener, 1993).

Social support. Participants reported on weekly support using a single item, “My partner has provided emotional support for me,” on a scale ranging from 0, not at all, to 8, very much. Social support from the first diary week was correlated with reports of overall social support from the partner on the Social Provisions Scale (Cutrona & Russell, 1987), obtained at the laboratory assessment, r .40 for patients and .57 for partners, ps .05. Although social support and relationship satisfaction are correlated and some older measures of relationship satisfaction have included items about social support (Fincham & Bradbury, 1987), more recent research shows that they are related, but distinct, constructs (e.g., Funk & Rogge, 2007).

Data Analytic Plan

Multilevel models with distinguishable dyads (patient vs. partner) across up to 26 weeks of diaries (diary completed at the laboratory assessment plus 25 additional diaries) were used to test the hypotheses. Data that were missing at random, such as skipped individual items in multi-item scales (.01% of the PHQ-9 items and .002% of the ASRM items), were imputed using EM imputation procedures. Missing single items measuring relationship satisfaction and social support were not imputed (8.1% of the relationship satisfaction items, 0.2% of the social support items) because it was impossible to know whether the item was missing at random or on purpose.

ThisdocumentiscopyrightedbytheAmericanPsychologicalAssociationoroneofitsalliedpublishers.

Thisarticleisintendedsolelyforthepersonaluseoftheindividualuserandisnottobedisseminatedbroadly.

Models were estimated in SAS PROC MIXED (SAS Institute, Cary, NC) using restricted maximum likelihood. The intraclass correlation (as calculated for a dual-intercept empty-means model) for relationship satisfaction was .51 for patients and .39 for partners, indicating that 51% and 39% of the variance in relationship satisfaction was due to between-person mean differences in patients and partners, respectively, with the remaining variance occurring at the within-person level. The intraclass correlation for social support was .56 for patients and .53 for partners, indicating that approximately half of the variance in social support was due to between-person mean differences. Thus, examination of withinperson means for both relationship satisfaction and social support was justified.

We used modified Actor-Partner Interdependence Models (Kenny, 1996), including separate fixed and random intercepts for patients and partners (Atkins, 2005), as shown in the equation for relationship satisfaction below. Independent variables were disaggregated into Level 2 person-mean (PM) and Level 1 withinperson (WP) components (Singer & Willett, 2003). Person-mean variables were grand-mean centered by partner, and WP variables were centered at each individual’s mean score. We included both actor and partner effects for weekly depressive symptoms but only the actor effect of manic symptoms for patients and the partner effect for partners because partners, by definition, had very low levels of manic symptoms. The autoregressive coefficient for the dependent variable (i.e., the individual’s score from the previous week) was included in all models to control for the possibility that the association between present week satisfaction and support was due to the effect of past week values. Patient sex was not included in the analyses reported below because it did not moderate effects (analyses including sex as a moderator are available from the authors upon request).

Relationship satisfactionti (patient)00 01(PM social supporti)

02(PM actor PHQ-9i)03(PM partner PHQ-9i)

04(PM actor ASRMi)10(WP social supportti)

20(WP actor PHQ-9ti)30(WP partner PHQ-9ti)

40(WP actor ASRMti)50(previous week satisfactionti)

ε0i(partner)100 101(PM social supporti)

102(PM actor PHQ-9i)103(PM partner PHQ-9i) 104(PM partner ASRMi)110(WP social supportti)

120(WP actor PHQ-9ti)130(WP partner PHQ-9ti)

140(WP partner ASRMti)150(previousweeksatisfactionti)

ε10i

Results

Participants reported moderate levels of relationship satisfaction (patients: M 4.71, SD 2.34; partners: M 4.76, SD 2.17) and emotional support (patients: M 5.04, SD 2.17; partners: M 4.26, SD 2.26) on average over the course of the study.

Patients had moderate symptoms of depression (M 7.10, SD 6.78) and mild symptoms of mania (M 2.23, SD 3.55) on average, whereas partners had mild symptoms of depression (M 1.85, SD 3.12).

As expected, a test of the difference of the intercept coefficients using an empty-means model revealed that partners reported less emotional support than patients, t(37.7) 2.96, p .005 (Hypothesis 1). Next, we tested the hypotheses that support on average would be positively associated with relationship satisfaction on average (Hypothesis 2) and that support in any given week would be associated with concurrent relationship satisfaction in that week (Hypothesis 3). We regressed weekly satisfaction onto personmean and within-person support, controlling for past week satisfaction and person-mean and within-person psychiatric symptoms. As hypothesized, person-mean support was positively associated with average relationship satisfaction for patients, b .51, SE .09, p .001, and partners, b .35, SE .10, p .002, and within-person support was positively associated with withinperson relationship satisfaction for patients, b .32, SE .04, p .001, and partners, b .33, SE .04, p .001 (see Table 1).

Finally, we tested the converse hypotheses that satisfaction would be positively associated with support, on average (Hypothesis 4), and that satisfaction in any given week would be associated with concurrent support (Hypothesis 5), controlling for past week support and person-mean and within-person psychiatric symptoms. As expected, person-mean relationship satisfaction was positively associated with average support for patients, b .58, SE .11, p .001, and partners, b .34, SE .14, p .02, and within-person relationship satisfaction was positively associated with within-person support for patients, b .24, SE .04, p .001, and partners, b .23, SE .03, p .001 (see Table 2).

Discussion

As expected, partners received less social support than patients, suggesting that partners of individuals with BPD may be at risk for inadequate social support in their relationships. Also as hypothe-

Table 1

Predicting Relationship Satisfaction by Patient and Partner

Social Support

Variable	Patient B (SE)	Partner B (SE)
Intercept	3.29 (.21)	3.42 (.22)
Weekly emotional support, person-mean	.51 (.09)	.35 (.10)
Weekly emotional support, within-person	.32 (.04)	.33 (.04)
Control variables Previous week satisfaction	.29 (.03)	.29 (.03)
Own PHQ-9, person-mean	.09 (.03)	.04 (.06)
Own PHQ-9, within-person	.07 (.02)	.15 (.03)
Own ASRM, person-mean	.03 (.07)	—
Own ASRM, within-person	.03 (.02)	—
Partner PHQ-9, person-mean	.003 (.06)	.05 (.03)
Partner PHQ-9, within-person	.02 (.04)	.001 (.02)
Partner ASRM, person-mean	—	.004 (.08)
Partner ASRM, within-person	—	.05 (.02)

Note. PHQ-9 Patient Health Questionnaire; ASRM Altman SelfRating Scale for Depression.

p .05. p .01. p .001.

Table 2

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Thisarticleisintendedsolelyforthepersonaluseoftheindividualuserandisnottobedisseminatedbroadly.

Predicting Social Support by Patient and Partner

Relationship Satisfaction

Variable	Patient B (SE)	Partner B (SE)
Intercept	3.88 (.25)	3.23 (.23)
Weekly relationship satisfaction, person-mean	.58 (.11)	.34 (.14)
Weekly relationship satisfaction, within-person	.24 (.04)	.23 (.03)
Control variables Social support the previous week	.23 (.04)	.26 (.04)
Own PHQ-9, person-mean	.03 (.04)	.01 (.07)
Own PHQ-9, within-person	.002 (.02)	.12 (.03)
Own ASRM, person-mean	.02 (.09)	—
Own ASRM, within-person	.03 (.09)	—
Partner PHQ-9, person-mean	.02 (.07)	.06 (.04)
Partner PHQ-9, within-person	.07 (.03)	.04 (.02)
Partner ASRM, person-mean	—	.15 (.09)
Partner ASRM, within-person	—	.03 (.02)

Note. PHQ-9 Patient Health Questionnaire; ASRM Altman SelfRating Scale for Depression.

p .05. p .01. p .001.

sized, average social support was positively associated with average relationship satisfaction, and greater-than-average support within any given week was associated with greater-than-average relationship satisfaction that week, controlling for patient and partner mood symptoms and previous week relationship satisfaction. The converse hypotheses, with support as the dependent variable and person-mean and within-person relationship satisfaction as the independent variables, were also supported. These results are consistent with the literature (e.g., Cutrona & Suhr, 1994; Sullivan et al., 2010) and expand the existing body of knowledge by demonstrating a reciprocal association between support and satisfaction. This pattern is consistent with the intimacy process model (Reis & Patrick, 1996), in which support in times of vulnerability enhances intimacy, increasing the likelihood of future expressions of vulnerability.

Our results also highlight the important relationship between social support and relationship satisfaction among couples in which a partner has BPD, over and above the well-documented effects of patient and partner mood symptoms on relationship functioning (e.g., Lam et al., 2005). Indeed, our results emphasize the need to go beyond the focus on patient symptoms and functioning alone in understanding BPD and to include broader relationship outcomes. Specifically, although individuals with BPD and their partners are at high risk for relationship distress and dissolution (Coryell et al., 1993; Whisman, 2007), the current study shows that at least some couples coping with BPD are able to sustain high levels of satisfaction. However, the association between social support and relationship satisfaction may also indicate that low levels of either variable may have reciprocal effects, leading to declines in the other. In addition, the lower levels of support reported by partners may reflect an imbalance in support provision that could contribute to eventual relationship distress and caregiver burden (Brock & Lawrence, 2009; Lam et al., 2005). Alternatively, it may be that individuals with BPD simply need more support than their partners and the results reflect the differential need.

BOYERS AND SIMPSON ROWE

Limitations

The primary limitation in the current study is the use of singleitem measures of relationship satisfaction and social support. Single-item measures limit the information that can be obtained about multifaceted constructs; future studies of social support in couples with BPD using more comprehensive measures of both variables are important to replicate our findings. In addition, the sample was relatively small and is not likely to be representative of all couples in which a partner has BPD. Indeed, the low levels of mood symptoms, on average, suggest that this may be a relatively high-functioning sample, although many patients in the study experienced weeks in which depressive and/or manic symptoms were quite high. Finally, the majority of participants were White, so the results may not generalize to a more diverse sample.

Implications and Future Directions

Social support from an intimate partner is highly beneficial (e.g., Cutrona & Suhr, 1994) as long as support is provided with some degree of skill and balanced, with neither partner experiencing too much burden of support provision or feeling inadequate as a result of needing support (Bolger & Amarel, 2007; Brock & Lawrence, 2009). Our findings extend the literature on social support to individuals with BPD and their partners. Unfortunately, couples in this population may be less skilled in support provision and acceptance than couples without severe mental illness, given the high rates of relationship dysfunction in BPD (Coryell et al., 1993; Judd & Akiskal, 2003; Whisman, 2007). Future research will need to explore the skill with which patients with BPD and their partners provide support to each other and factors that may interfere with support provision (e.g., severe mood episodes, substance abuse, and stress). Experimental manipulation of support provision through psychoeducation or instructions may also enhance our understanding of the association between support and relationship satisfaction within this population. Such research has the potential to inform relationship and family-based interventions that may benefit individuals with BPD and their loved ones.

References

Altman, E. G., Hedeker, D., Peterson, J. L., & Davis, J. M. (1997). The Altman self-rating mania scale. Biological Psychiatry, 42, 948–955. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0006-3223(96)00548-3

American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed., text revision). Washington, DC: Author. Antonucci, T. C., Lansford, J. E., & Akiyama, H. (2001). Impact of positive and negative aspects of marital relationships and friendships on well-being of older adults. Applied Developmental Science, 5, 68–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S1532480XADS0502_2

Aron, A., Aron, E. N., & Smollan, D. (1992). Inclusion of other in the self scale and the structure of interpersonal closeness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 596–612. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022
3514.63.4.596

Atkins, D. C. (2005). Using multilevel models to analyze couple and family treatment data: Basic and advanced issues. Journal of Family Psychology, 19, 98–110.

journal

In this journal exercise, you will observe and reflect on the similarities and differences in two published research studies (one qualitative, one quantitative) on a similar topic (See Patients’ Perceptions of Barriers to Self-managing Bipolar Disorder: A Qualitative Study (Links to an external site.)
and Social Support and Relationship Satisfaction in Bipolar Disorder (Links to an external site.)
). A table is provided for entering your observations. Prior to beginning this journal assignment, review the required resources for this week and read the two research studies. You may find it helpful to print out the studies and view them side by side, or if you have a large computer screen have them both open to facilitate comparing their features. Download the Method Comparison Journal Exercise Form
Download Method Comparison Journal Exercise Formand save it to your computer. Fill in your name and the date, then the cells of the table with your thoughts on the characteristics of the articles. Save your entries and upload the completed file to Waypoint.

Journal

Students are required to submit weekly reflective narratives throughout the course that will culminate in a final, course-long reflective journal due in Topic 10. The narratives help students integrate leadership and inquiry into current practice.

This reflection journal also allows students to outline what they have discovered about their professional practice, personal strengths and weaknesses, and additional resources that could be introduced in a given situation to influence optimal outcomes. Each week students should also explain how they met a course competency or course objective(s).

In each week’s entry, students should reflect on the personal knowledge and skills gained throughout the course. Journal entries should address one or more of the areas stated below. In the Topic 10 graded submission, each of the areas below should be addressed as part of the summary submission.

New practice approaches
Interprofessional collaboration
Health care delivery and clinical systems
Ethical considerations in health care
Practices of culturally sensitive care
Ensuring the integrity of human dignity in the care of all patients
Population health concerns
The role of technology in improving health care outcomes
Health policy
Leadership and economic models
Health disparities

journal

666572
research-article2016 ISP
00
10.1177/0020764016666572International Journal of Social Psychiatry

Blixen et al.

Original Article

Patients’ perceptions of barriers to self-managing bipolar disorder: A qualitative study

Carol Blixen1,2, Adam T Perzynski2, Ashley Bukach1, Molly Howland3 and Martha Sajatovic4,5

Abstract

E CAMDEN SCHIZOPH

International Journal of

Social Psychiatry

Background: Self-management of bipolar disorder (BD) is challenging for many individuals.

Material: Interviews were used to assess perceived barriers to disease self-management among 21 high-risk patients with BD. Content analysis, with an emphasis on dominant themes, was used to analyze the data.

Results: Three major domains of barriers emerged: individual barriers (psychological, knowledge, behavioral and physical health); family/community-level barriers (lack of support and resources); and provider/healthcare system (inadequate communication and access to care).

Conclusion: Care approaches providing social and peer support, optimizing communication with providers and integrating medical and psychiatric care may improve self-management of BD in this vulnerable population.

2016, Vol. 62(7) 635 –644 © The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0020764016666572 isp.sagepub.com

636 International Journal of Social Psychiatry 62(7)

Blixen et al. 637

Keywords

Bipolar disorder, barriers, self-management

Introduction

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a chronic mental illness associated with reduced quality of life, decreased functioning, high rates of suicide and high financial costs (Murray & Lopez, 1997; Zaretsky, Rizvi, & Parikh, 2007). Prevalence in the United States may be as high as 3.7% for BD spectrum disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2002; Hirschfeld, Calabrese, & Weissman, 2002). A cornerstone of treatment for individuals with BD is mood stabilizing medications such as lithium, anticonvulsants and atypical antipsychotic medication (American Psychiatric Association, 2002; Goodwin & Young, 2003; Yatham et al., 2005); yet, roughly half of individuals with BD are non-adherent with medication (Lingam & Scott, 2002; Perlick, Rosenheck, Kaczynski, & Kozma, 2004; Sajatovic, Valenstein, Blow, Ganoczy, & Ignacio. 2006, 2007). Concurrent with the use of medications, Chronic Disease Self-Management (CDSM) programs can empower patients and improve health outcomes by emphasizing the central role of the individual in managing their mental and physical health while collaborating with health-care professionals and systems (Janney, Bauer, & Kilbourne, 2014; Lorig, 2015; Lorig, Ritter, Pifer, & Werner, 2015). Evidence-based skills shown to be effective in BD and amenable to chronic disease self-management include the following: psychoeducation, monitoring moods, social functioning, sleep hygiene, setting goals and relapse plans and adopting healthy lifestyle plans (Janney, Bauer, & Kilbourne, 2014). However, self-management is challenging for many individuals with BD; there are numerous barriers that can impede progress and success.

Few studies have specifically addressed patients’ perceptions of barriers to self-management of BD; most have focused on risk factors for poor adherence (Lingam & Scott, 2002; Perlick et al., 2004; Sajatovic et al., 2006,

2007). In this qualitative analysis, perceived barriers to

1Department of Psychiatry, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA

2 Center for Health Care Research and Policy, MetroHealth Medical Center, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA

3School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH,

USA

4Department of Psychiatry, Neurology, and Biostatistics &

Epidemiology, School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA

5Neurological Institute, University Hospitals Case Medical Center,

Cleveland, OH, USA

Corresponding author:

Carol Blixen, Department of Psychiatry, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA. Email: cxb28@cwru.edu

self-management among high-risk patients with BD were assessed as part of a large, on-going US National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH)-funded, randomized controlled trial (RCT). This RCT is testing a novel customized adherence enhancement (CAE) intervention intended to promote BD medication adherence versus an educational control (EDU) intervention in poorly adherent individuals with BD. Our findings can enrich our understanding of the processes that impact the outcomes of this RCT and may help clinicians and researchers integrate the consideration of these factors into effective care delivery practices.

Methods

Sample and setting

Participants (n = 21) from the RCT were recruited at baseline for the present analysis. For qualitative research, this sample size is within the recommended number of 5–25 individuals who have all experienced the same phenomena (Polkinghorne, 1989). Non-adherence was assessed by the Tablets Routine Questionnaire (TRQ) as the percentage of days with missed doses in the past week for each prescribed foundational oral medication for the treatment of BD. For individuals who were on one or more foundational medication, an average was calculated in order to gather information on the full BD treatment regimen. Higher TRQ scores are a reflection of worse medication adherence (Scott & Pope, 2002). In addition, a sampling grid designed to ensure variability in gender, age, race/ethnicity and randomization group was used in the recruitment of the medication non-adherent participants. The study was conducted in the Department of Psychiatry of a Midwestern urban hospital in the United States and was approved by the local Institutional Review Board. All participants provided written informed consent.

The mean age of the sample was 47.29 (standard deviation (SD) = 11.06) years, 15 (71.4%) were women and the mean level of education was 12.10 (SD = 2.31) years. Only 3 (14.3%) were married, and 18 (85.7%) were disabled or unemployed. In all, 13 (61.9%), identified themselves as African-American, 5 (23.8%) as Caucasian, 1 (4.8%) as Hispanic and 3 (14.3%) as others. In all, 17 (81.0%) had type I BD, and 3 (14.3%) had type II BD. The average age of onset was 22.05 (SD = 10.31) years, and the average number of psychiatric hospitalizations was 4.15 (SD = 3.47). We have limited data on comorbid physical health conditions for the 21 participants in this qualitative study. This type of information was not collected until approximately 6 months after the study had started, when many of them had completed their participation. However, comorbidities reported for the whole sample in the RCT (n = 160) revealed the leading conditions to be hypertension 59 (45.7%), arthritis 73 (45.6%) and high cholesterol 39 (38.0%).

Study design

In this cross-sectional qualitative study, a thematic analytical approach was used to develop a deeper understanding of the perceived barriers to optimal self-management of BD (Strauss, 1987). In this approach, researchers move their analysis from a broad reading of the data toward discovering patterns and developing themes.

Qualitative data collection and analysis

Individual face-to-face semi-structured interviews, conducted as part of the baseline assessment in the RCT, were used to collect narrative data on self-management barriers. The goal of using this type of interview was to explore a topic more openly and to allow interviewees to express their opinions and ideas in their own words. Semistructured interviews are an appropriate strategy for learning the vocabulary, and discovering the thinking patterns, of the target audience as well as for discovering unanticipated findings and exploring hidden meanings (Marshall & Rossman, 2006). Therefore, respondents were given as much latitude as possible to describe the strategies they used to manage their chronic disease. A topic guide was used to focus the discussion on main topics and specific topic-related questions. For example, under the topic, ‘barriers to managing BD’, the following question was asked: ‘What sort of things get in the way, or prevent you from managing/taking care of your BD?’ Follow-up questions such as ‘Would you explain further’, and ‘Would you give me an example?’ were used to facilitate respondent communication. Interviews, which lasted approximately an hour, were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim.

In qualitative research, data collection, coding and analysis occur simultaneously. Emerging insights can be incorporated into later stages of data generation, enhancing the comprehensiveness of the results (Strauss, 1987). We used a thematic content analysis approach to data analysis, encompassing open, axial and sequential coding and the constant comparative method to generate constructs (themes) and elaborate the relationship among constructs (Strauss, 1987). A coding dictionary that included mutually exclusive code definitions was then constructed. Coding structure was reviewed after a preliminary analysis of a sub-sample of transcripts, and the dictionary was refined through comparison, categorization and discussion of each code’s properties and dimensions (Strauss, 1987). Significant statements and themes attached to the codes enabled identification/characterization of perceived barriers to self-management of BD. Reduction of data in this manner enabled us to write a composite description that represented the essence of the phenomenon (perceptions of ‘how’ and ‘why’) individuals with BD have problems with self-managing. To ensure qualitative rigor throughout the inquiry process, an audit trail was developed which

Table 1. Personal-level barriers to disease self-management among poorly adherent patients with bipolar disorder (BD) (n = 21).

Themes and categories	Illustrative quotations from respondents
Psychological barriers Stigma and isolation	‘It’s kinda weird. People look at you differently. When you say, well, I have bipolar disorder, it’s like you’re crazy or something. Stay away from her’. (Respondent #2015) ‘… I isolate a lot. I try to stay away from people; basically just stay in my room. I just lock my doors and stay in the house all the time’. (Respondent #2052)
Knowledge barriers Diagnosis and causes	‘I have no understanding of Bipolar Disorder. Once I understand what it is that I have and why I’m what I am, then maybe I’ll understand why I sometimes respond or do things the way I do’. (Respondent #2052) ‘I would like to know what causes it, but I don’t. I just figured I was just born like this’. (Respondent #2012)
Behavioral barriers Attitudes and lifestyle issues	‘I don’t like being controlled by my medication, and being so dependent upon it. I just try to do it on my own. I don’t want to be stuck on medicine all the rest of my life’. (Respondent #2009) ‘Bipolar is a serious disease because I make irrational, crazy decisions, mainly when I’m manic. Then I have to face the consequences’. (Respondent #2003)
Physical health barriers	‘But being bipolar and dealing with having HIV is sort of like a tough issue because I’m dealing with two things!’ (Respondent #2005)

documented all research discussions, meetings and activities. In addition, two qualitatively trained investigators (C.B., A.P.) independently coded each transcript to ensure consistency and transparency of the coding; discrepancies were resolved by discussion.

Results

Analysis of the data generated three major domains of barriers to disease self-management among patients with BD: (1) personal-level barriers, (2) family- and communitylevel barriers and (3) provider- and health-care system– level barriers.

Personal-level barriers

In Table 1, themes and illustrative quotations emerging from the discussion of individual-level barriers to selfmanagement are shown. We classified these themes into the four categories that reflected the personal barriers that our respondents faced in trying to self-manage their BD: (1) psychological, (2) knowledge, (3) behavioral and (4) physical health.

Psychological barriers

Stigma and isolation. As noted in Table 1, having BD was stigmatizing, causing respondents to feel perceived as different from others, resulting in a loss of self and social isolation:

I feel different from other people. Sometime I feel God gave me a bad hand. If I can’t think like most people, or you know, do stuff like other people, it gets to me. (Respondent #2004)

I like to play chess, but I don’t go nowhere to play chess.

Normally, I sit with the pieces by myself. (Respondent #2012)

Taking medications for BD was also perceived as stigmatizing because everyone would then know they had a mental illness:

It took a long time for me to take the medicine because I didn’t want to be classified as having a mental illness because I thought I’d be ostracized … If my friends knew that I was taking medicine because I was bipolar, they’ll say I am crazy.

(Respondent #2006)

Knowledge barriers

Diagnosis and causes. There was a paucity of knowledge about BD, ranging from the diagnosis itself to causes of the disease:

I had a long time problem trying to understand it because I thought bipolar was two people in one and this evil side and this good side would come in and out. (Respondent #2006)

… I still don’t understand what constitutes it. To understand it is the first issue. And since I don’t understand what symptoms are, I gotta first know ‘em before I can say I’m aware of ‘em. (Respondent #2052)

While some described the cause of their BD as a ‘chemical imbalance of the brain’ or ‘genetic’, many other causes were cited which ranged from traumatic childhoods:

I’ve had a few tragedies, you know, coming up in childhood and stuff, but I don’t know if that had something to do with it. (Respondent #2009)

To being born of alcoholic parents as well as their own alcohol and drug use:

I thought because me being a child alcoholic that has something to do with my parents drinking when I was born. (Respondent #2006)

It has something to do with my brain, you know. I know I did a lot of damage to myself. … drugs and alcohol play a part in damaging my brain. (Respondent #2005)

Most respondents described their symptoms of BD as mood swings, manic behavior and/or depression, but one respondent described his symptoms as something called the HALT:

But then when I get home, sometime I get real lonely and get that H-A-L- T–where you get hungry, angry, lonely and tired. … it’s like I’m shutting down, and I don’t know when I’m coming out of it. (Respondent #2015)

Behavioral barriers

Attitudes. All the respondents agreed that BD was a very serious illness:

It’s basically one of those illnesses, like cancer or AIDS or something like that. So, it’s very serious, like heart attacks or those illnesses that can take your life. (Respondent #2020)

However, negative or ambivalent attitudes about medications prescribed for their BD posed barriers to self-management. These included complaints about side effects, which ranged from dry mouth, inability to concentrate, drowsiness, weight gain to out-of-body experiences:

… it’s almost like an out-of-body experience. Like even just looking into the world, like walking down the street, it would seem so far away. And it would seem like it took extra effort to pick up my legs and to move … it was a very uncomfortable and edgy feeling. And I couldn’t handle it. (Respondent

#2016)

Frustration with keeping up a medication routine and skipping medications on days when they were feeling good were also common attitudes:

A lot of times I stop taking my medication, because I get tired of just the routine of taking medication. I’ll just get up one morning and just say ‘I ain’t taking it’. Then a few days go by where I haven’t took it and then I just start lookin for some drugs. (Respondent #2012)

Sometimes you feel you don’t need to take it maybe because you feel fine or something, so the good days could be skip days. (Respondent #2005)

For some, being in a relationship meant that they avoided taking medications, while others felt that they didn’t need to take them:

If I start a relationship, I stop taking medication because I don’t want them to know what I got (BD). (Respondent #2007) I don’t see myself being one of those people who need it (medication). So, I have a messed up way of thinking.

(Respondent #2020)

Lifestyle issues. One of the major barriers to self-management was making irrational decisions which led to a spiral of negative consequences and despair:

I make irrational decisions mainly when I’m manic. I make crazy, bad decisions, and then I have consequences. I got arrested because I had warrants on me from 2012 for being argumentative and irritable in public places. And when the cops approached me, I would be yelling and screaming. And then I got jail for eight days and lost my job … (Respondent #2013)

One respondent described her sudden decision to move out of state with her three children because she looked on-line and saw

… these big beautiful houses they have in Georgia, that you can get for less price that you can get here. The problem was I didn’t have enough money and no support. I didn’t have a car and everybody would tell me not to go to Georgia without having transportation. But I went anyway, sold everything and dragged my three kids with me, uprooted them. I was manic, I was excited and then I came back to reality, and moved back here, and became very depressed after that. (Respondent #2015)

Limited finances, lack of transportation and drug and alcohol use were also cited as barriers to self-management of BD:

I have no social activities. I have no money to socialize, even Bingo costs money. (Respondent #2002)

I have a lot of problems going to get meds and seeing my doctor. A lot of times I don’t have bus fare. (Respondent #2012)

I’m a recovering addict, and I sometimes have my back slides. I’m somebody who experimented with a lot of things and just got it down to just two, smoking marijuana or doing cocaine or crack. I’m weaning myself – slowly but surely. (Respondent

#205)

Physical health barriers

As noted in Table 1 and below, respondents also cited comorbid physical illnesses as barriers to management of their mental illness:

… I have diabetes, chronic arthritis, and chronic asthma. I have a history of pulmonary embolisms and deep vein thrombosis. Did I miss any? Oh, I also have high blood pressure and asthma. (Respondent #2093)

Table 2. Family and community barriers to disease self-management among poorly adherent patients with bipolar disorder (BD) (n = 21).

Themes and categories

Illustrative quotations from respondents

Limited understanding of BD

‘My father thinks I should just get over it, that it’s just in my head. Like I’m making it out to be more than what it is. My father just don’t get it and I don’t think he ever will. He’s just set in his ways and he thinks I’m just stupid and just do these things. (Respondent #2016)

‘You have people that tell you, “Oh you don’t need that (medications), you just need God.” But you know, I know I need them. I know that I need it, that’s the one thing I know’. (Respondent #2008)

Limited community resources

‘Right now I stay with a friend. I’m homeless. I been tryin to get some help with subsidized housing, but I can’t seem to get no help, unless I stay at this shelter, S.G. And I know if I go down to S.G. and stay, I’ll wind up usin drugs, cause it’s a lot of drugs down there’. (Respondent #2012)

I was diagnosed with diabetes type one thirteen years ago. I take insulin and that interacts with bipolar and causes mood swings too. It’s even more dangerous to have type one interacting with bipolar than type two because you go from low to high very quickly. (Respondent #2013)

In summary, respondents in the study cited many personal barriers to self-management of BD which included perceived stigma and isolation, lack of knowledge about the disease itself and their own negative attitudes toward medications which ranged from denial of their need for them to feelings of being controlled and dependent. Other personal barriers included their own chaotic lifestyles and comorbid physical diseases which also complicated management of their BD.

Family- and community-level barriers

Table 2 shows themes, descriptive codes and illustrative quotations emerging from the discussion of family- and community-level barriers. Two key barrier categories were as follows: (1) limited understanding of BD and (2) limited community resources.

Limited understanding of BD

Lack of support. In addition to their feeling isolated and alone, respondents felt an overwhelming lack of support from family and the community in which they lived:

Well, they try, but they don’t really know. They think they know and a lot of them just don’t think there’s anything wrong with me. Like the lady I stay with, she try to understand, but she really don’t understand. (Respondent #2012)

Well my husband, he has a mental illness too. Schizophrenic … paranoia. I mean, he might understand but he basically don’t like to talk about certain things anyways, so I don’t know if he understands. (Respondent #2005)

Estrangement. Having BD sometimes led to estrangement from family:

Yep, that’s what my family does, they avoid me. And they say it’s because I live on the west side, and they live all the way out on the east side. They got a car. I don’t. I compare my situation to my friends and their relationship with their families and I’m like well, her cousins come over and visit her. You know, it’s like no matter where I live if you’re concerned, then show it! (Respondent #2007)

I don’t have family in the United States. It’s just me. The last few years really, my communications with them went from bad to worse. (Respondent #2013)

Stressful relationships. Friction, misunderstandings and sometimes abuse added additional barriers to self-managing their BD:

And like even with your family, you can tend to get more stressed, get angry at each other and get frustrated … (Respondent #2005)

I live with my boyfriend and it’s been an on and off twenty year abusive relationship. And as my mind gets a little bit clearer, he’s not liking it. He’s so used to keeping me, like in his control, you know. He’s been physical with me and with my dog, cause when he goes at me, my dog goes at him. And he don’t like that. I’ve put him in prison before for domestic violence. (Respondent #2016)

Negative attitudes about medications for BD

Because of misinformation and beliefs about BD, family members and even community support groups often gave respondents incorrect advice about taking medications for their BD:

My family is always telling me ‘I don’t think you need to take the medication, I think you need to call the doctor’. (Respondent #2011)

… and people telling me ‘Girl you don’t need that medicine, just all you need to do is cut the stress in your life, you don’t need the medicine. You looked zooted out. You know, I can tell you’re on medicine’. And that makes me say ‘Okay, I don’t need it no more’. But I know I do. (Respondent #2007)

I used to go to this one AA meeting, and they were saying no drugs or alcohol whatsoever and they tried to implicate that you shouldn’t even take mental health drug and stuff because they felt that the effect of them got you high, which is not true.

(Respondent #2006)

Limited community resources

Unstable living situations, homelessness and limited income often led to living in shelters where self-managing BD was especially difficult and led to a spiral of despair:

I stay with a friend, but she don’t want me there, because she wants an intimate relationship. And I don’t want an intimate relationship with her. So, basically, I don’t have a home. (Respondent #2012)

The problem is a lot of housing programs I do not qualify for, because I’m not a permanent resident or an American citizen for the last seven years, which is a requirement. So I have to go back down to the shelter. It’s been very hard for me to accept it. And that’s triggering my depression. (Respondent #2013)

When you have a limited income, it’s hard to find housing. It’s hard to find programs where you can go to be able to get some type of help. They don’t give you any avenues of resources. They’ll tell you ‘well, go down to the welfare building’. Welfare building cannot help you … it’s even more frustrating when you get down there and you have to deal with the social workers, supervisors, the people down there, the people waiting in the lobby. It’s crazy and it’s another thing, more stress added on to you. (Respondent #2011)

In summary, family and community issues such as lack of social support, limited understanding of BD, misinformation about medication, stressful relationships and limited income and housing options posed what respondents perceived as insurmountable barriers to self-management of BD.

Provider- and health-care system–level barriers

Table 3 shows themes, descriptive codes and illustrative quotations emerging from the discussion of provider- and health-care system–level barriers. Two key categories of barriers emerged from the data: (1) patient/provider relationships and (2) access to care.

Patient/provider relationships

Ineffective communication. For respondents, the major barrier to having a good patient/provider relationship was the inability of their provider to communicate with them. Many times respondents didn’t understand what their providers told them during visits because of the use of unfamiliar words or medical jargon:

I’m developmentally delayed, and I don’t comprehend things as well as most people. If you don’t break it down to something in basically layman’s terms that I can understand, I’m not gonna understand what they say … (Respondent #2020)

The emphasis on medication-prescribing during the visit, instead of listening, was also seen as a barrier to effective communication:

I’m looking at her and she’s looking at me and it’s making me feel like I’m really crazy or I don’t know what I’m saying. It’s hard to get them to understand and they just give you you pills, and bye bye! I don’t want your drugs. I just want you to hear me, what I’m telling you! (Respondent #2004)

Another reported aspect of poor provider communication skills was provider body language that made them feel as though they were ‘just another patient’:

She really didn’t say much. She kinda just sat there… no rapport whatsoever. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand what she was saying, but her body language! A lot of times people don’t realize your body language will speak louder than what your verbal words say. When I see that your body language is speaking to me, as if you’re like, ‘oK’ here we go with another hard luck person with a hundred problems. (Respondent

#2011)

Access to care

Appointment issues. As noted in Table 3, getting an appointment with a mental health provider was a long and frustrating process, and infrequent scheduled appointments left too much time for respondents to remember what they wanted to report or talk about:

I’ve seen him maybe twice over the last six months. By the time I get around to seeing him, I can’t remember. But I know there’s something important I want to talk to him about, but we’re already on another issue, then I can’t frame what the question’s gonna be or why I’m asking the question. (Respondent #2052)

Turnover in providers. Most of the respondents received their care from resident physician trainees who often rotated off the service after a period of time. Turnover in providers left respondents feeling frustrated and often prevented the formation of a therapeutic relationship. For those who had made progress in managing their BD, the loss of the provider was especially discouraging:

… at L.S. you never can tell who you’re gonna get. It’s like a box of chocolates … I could have somebody one week and somebody the next week. … I always want the same person. I’ll wait three months to get an appointment, and then that person is no longer there. So, there’s a turnover. And I don’t get to build up a relationship. (Respondent #2093)

Table 3. Provider and health-care system–level barriers to disease self-management among poorly adherent patients with bipolar disorder (n = 21).

Themes and categories

Illustrative quotations from respondents

Patient/provider relationships

‘That’s fine and well, but it would be nice if I understood what is all goin on, so I can at least appreciate the visit, half hour though it may be … I: … then I can at least understand or know which direction I’m goin, or at least I’ll have a workin knowledge of why you’re asking the questions you are asking me, or whatever. When I see my therapist again, I’m gonna ask him to explain to me what the hell bipolar is – nobody ever told me’. (Respondent #2052)

‘The same questions every time. It’s just a standard group of questions. Do I hear voices? Can I read other people’s minds? Sometime I want to tell what’s goin on. Like, if my brother, sister dies, my past. I’ll get upset about that and I want to vent. I wanna get that out. It’s like, I go in just to get a prescription for meds’. (Respondent #2093)

Access to care

‘It’s been over a year. They state you have to have a referral. Well, if that’s the case I’m still waiting almost two years for that same referral for someone to call me. Hey look, what does it take? Me to hurt myself or someone else or to really have a bad, you know, reaction for myself, in order to get some help. I need to speak to somebody. I got a lot of issues’. (Respondent #2089)

‘… but every six months they give you a new one (therapist) anyway. So you don’t really have a chance to have a close relationship. So, personally I try not to discuss anything with them that I feel is very personal to me’. (R

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Prior to beginning work on this Journal element, please select a professional position within a criminal justice agency/organization or a juvenile justice agency/organization. Then, locate an agency/organization that employs individuals within that position. For this journal entry, you will briefly explore (in one to two pages) a professional position within a criminal justice agency/organization or a juvenile justice agency/organization in terms of duties and responsibilities. As noted below, you will need to gather information from the agency/organization that you select in order to address the below elements. You will then need to address the following:

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